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  • January 2025 Newsletter

    Hello, everyone! We want to wish you all a very Happy New Year! 2025 looks like a busy year for parliamentary scholars already. We have lots of exciting calls for you in this first newsletter of the year.

    1. PSA General Conference, Birmingham, 14-16 April 2025
    2. PSA Academic Prizes
    3. PSA Parliaments Members Survey
    4. Calls for Papers
    5. Opportunities
    6. Upcoming Events
    7. Urgent Questions
    8. Recent Publications
    9. On the Blog
    10. Overview of Parliaments Map

    If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to our group, please let us know.

    Best wishes,

    Caroline, Diana, Ruxandra, Jack and Lauren

    1. PSA General Conference, Birmingham, 14–16 April 2025

    The outline programme for the PSA 75th Annual International Conference has been released, and we are happy to host six panels. We are looking forward to seeing many of you in Birmingham.

    The early-bird registration is open until 21 February 2025. For Early Career Network members, daily rates are available. More information here.

    2. PSA Academic Prizes

    The PSA awards a number of prizes for dissertations, professional contributions, research and teaching. The deadline for nominations is on 24 January 2025.

    More details on the nomination process can be found here.

    3. PSA Parliaments Members Survey

    Thank you to everyone who has already filled in our members survey. We are gathering your viewpoints to plan our priorities and activities.

    We are still looking to hear from our members until 24 January 2025. It should only take a couple of minutes to fill in the form.

    4. Call for Papers

    Conference of the Standing Group on Parliaments, 2–4 July, Barcelona, University of Barcelona

    The ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments is hosting its 9th flagship conference this summer in vibrant Barcelona, offering an invaluable experience for anyone studying or researching in the field.  The Call for Panels and Papers now open and inviting proposals on national, sub-national, or international parliaments. Submissions  focusing on under-researched regions are strongly encouraged.

    Panel and paper proposals deadline: 12 February 2025. 

    Registration deadline: 19 March 2025.

    For more information please click here.

    4th Global Conference on Parliamentary Studies, Athens, 13 June 2025

    The Hellenic OCR Team and Széchenyi István University, in cooperation with International Journal of Parliamentary Studies and Brill invite thought leaders to address the challenges and opportunities of our time, where technology, media and geopolitical shifts intersect with democratic governance. The conference theme is: “Reinventing Democracy for the 21st Century”.

    Submissions are welcome from scholars at all career stages (including PhD students and post-doctoral researchers), as well as practitioners with relevant academic backgrounds such as law, political science, social sciences, informatics and engineering.

    Abstract submission deadline: 28 February 2025. Submit your abstract here.  

    More information about the event can be found here.

    5. Opportunities

    Updated guidance: contributing your research to POSTnotes and briefings

    The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) have simplified and updated its guidance for researchers to share their expertise and provide contributions to POST’s work, such as POSTnotes and briefings for parliamentarians.
    Researchers can feed into POST research projects by following the instructions on the contributing to POST research as an expert webpage. Contributions can be emailed to post@parliament.uk within specified deadlines. 

    Call for evidence: The Speaker’s Conference on the security of candidates, MPs and elections (UK Parliament)

    On 14 October 2024 the House of Commons agreed a motion to establish a committee, to be known as the Speaker’s Conference, to consider: the factors influencing the threat levels against candidates and MPs, and the effectiveness of the response to such threats. 

    The committee is currently accepting written evidence from anyone with answers to the questions in the call for evidence. You can submit evidence until Friday 7 February 2025.

    6. Upcoming Events

    ECPR General Conference 2025, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 26–29 August 2025 

    The ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments endorsed Section S08 on Advancing the Study of Parliaments: Structures, Actors and Processes at a Crossroads.

    This section seeks to advance our study of parliaments as critical institutions in representative democracies, and to examine how the role and importance of parliaments has evolved over time. It focuses on the structures and organisational aspects of parliaments, as well as key actors and their relationships within and outwith these institutions (such as individual parliamentarians, parliamentary party groups, administrative staff or external stakeholders), and the processes and practices inside these political arenas. 

    For more information please see here.

    7. Urgent Questions with Richard Whitaker

    For those of you who have missed our latest Urgent Questions with Prof. Richard in the December newsletter, worry not! You can still read it here.

    8. Recent Publications

    If you would like your published research to be featured in this section, please email Caroline with details.

    9. On the Blog

    We would love to have more contributions on our blog. If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study, please get in touch with our communications officer Jack.

    • Westminster Hall: Parliament’s Best Kept Secret?, by Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Louise Thompson. This blog is based on a paper presented by the authors to the Annual Conference of the PSA Parliaments group in November 2024 at the Senedd Cymru in Cardiff.

    10. Overview of Parliaments Map

    For anybody who wishes to cover any of the countries not yet covered in our map, contact our communications officer Jack.

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