Some of the films featuring in the International Security Film Club (see below for full listing and details)

Seminars/ Workshops

The department hosts a number of seminars and workshops in the area of International Security each year. Recently, these have been in the form of dedicated workshops with invited speakers on a particular theme, or individual speakers in the departmental seminar series presenting current research on International Security. Postgraduate students are particularly encouraged to attend the departmental seminar series: full details of past speakers (including podcasts) and of those for the current year are available here.

In June 2008 the department played host to a Postgraduate Conference on World Security Studies, 'The New Twenty Years Crisis', which took place in June, 2008. Professor Ken Booth (Aberystwyth) and Dr Lene Hansen (Copenhagen) are acting as keynote speakers. A programme is available here.

Postgraduate students also run the Critical International and Political Studies (CRIPS) graduate working group, which has featured a series of seminars from postgraduate students on current research in International Security and an annual lecture in 2007 given by Professor Ole Wæver (Copenhagen) on climate change and security. This group also runs a working paper series and a series of social events. Further details on CRIPS are available here.

Regular updates of upcoming events will be posted on the news section of the PAIS homepage (accessible here).

Examples of recent and forthcoming workshops/ conferences/ seminar presentations engaging with the International Security theme include:

• Graduate Conference on Global Security, June 12-13, 2008. Keynote speakers: Ken Booth (Aberystwyth) and Lene Hansen (Copenhagen). 
• Departmental Seminars, 2008/9:
  • Richard Jackson (Aberystwyth), 8th October. Graduate Lecture: 'Critical Terrorism Studies';
  • Rita Floyd (PAIS), Edward Page (PAIS) and Andrew Sentance (Warwick), 15th October. Roundtable: Political Responses to Climate Change: Security, Ethics, Economics; 
  • Muthiah Alagappa (East-West Center, Washington DC), 22nd October. Seminar: 'The Implications of Nuclear Weapons for Security and Stability in Asia';
  • Desmond King (Oxford), Mark Ledwidge (PAIS) and Trevor McCrisken (PAIS), 12th November. Roundtable: The American Presidential Election: An Assessment;
  • Tim Dunne (Exeter), 26th November. Seminar: 'Britain, Iraq and Marketplace Failure';
  • Stuart Croft (PAIS), Michael Kenny (Sheffield) and Tahir Abbas (Birmingham), 18th February. Roundtable: The Politics of British Identity;
  • Richard Aldrich (PAIS), 11th March. Seminar: 'From Bletchley Park to Brave New World'.
• Critical International Political Studies (CRIPS) annual lecture, 2007: Professor Ole Waever (Copenhagen), ‘Climate Change: the Security Issue of the Future?’  
• Workshop, Memory and Conflict, September 2007. A workshop involving several participants from departments across the university and invited participants from the UK academic community.
• Departmental Seminars 2007/8:
  • Chris Browning (PAIS), Whose West is it Anyway? The Core, Margins, Outsiders and the Construction of a Geopolitical Subjectivity';
  • Philip Cunliffe (Kings), ‘Perpetual Police: Towards a Critique of UN Peacekeeping’;
  • Matt McDonald (PAIS) ‘The Coalition of the Willing and Justifications for Intervention in the ‘War on Terror’’;
  • Marc Schelhase (Kings), ‘Security and Risk’;
  • John Williams (Durham), ‘Just War Theory, the War on Terror and the Problem of Political Space’.
• CRIPS seminars, 2007/8:
  • Jack Holland, ‘Critical geopolitics: A Framework for analysing foreign policy as culturally embedded discourse’;
  • Kyungyon Moon, 'Humanitarian Food Assistance to North Korea;
  • Andrew Mumford, ‘New Analytical Approaches to Counter-Insurgency’;
  • Ted Svensson, 'Frontiers of Blame: India's War on Terror'.

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND GLOBAL ETHICS FILM CLUB

The International Security and Global Ethics Film Club is an informal event, open to all students and staff. Each year it is coordinated by students enrolled on the MA in International Security or taking the New Security Challenges module. The films and topics listed intersect with core themes and issues covered in the New Security Challenges module but should be of interest to students studying other modules as well. As such the programme covers teaching weeks from the Autumn through to Spring terms. Students are encouraged to come up with their own suggestions for relevant films in the summer term, and for alternative films on the topics listed. The criterion for showing a film is that it should raise a number of interesting analytical questions about a particular issue relevant to global security and/or global ethics.

 

For more information, contact Dr Chris Browning (c.s.browning@warwick.ac.uk) or Dr James Brassett (j.brassett.1@warwick.ac.uk).

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME, 2009-10

Mondays, 5.00pm- 8pm 

Term 1+2 - SO.20   

AUTUMN TERM, 2009 

12 Oct    -        Canadian Bacon                (Security, Fear and Political Legitimacy)

19 Oct    -        Darwin’s Nightmare           (Globalization: A Critique)

26 Oct    -        Lord of War                       (The Global Arms Trade)

  2 Nov    -       Dr Strangelove                  (Rationality and Nuclear Strategy)

16 Nov    -       Team America                    (US Foreign Policy, the War on Terror)

23 Nov   -        Welcome to Sarajevo        (Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention)

30 Nov   -        Dirty Pretty Things            (Immigration I)

  7 Dec    -       Hotel Rwanda                    (Genocide and the United Nations)

SPRING TERM, 2010  

11 Jan     -        The Fog of War                 (War and Strategy)

18 Jan     -        The Corporation               (Resource Conflict)

25 Jan     -        La Haine                           (Immigration II)

  1 Feb     -       Blood Diamond                  (Poverty and Resource Conflict) 

  8 Feb    -        The Constant Gardener    (Health and Multinational Corporations)

22 Feb    -        The Lives of Others          (Surveillance and Resistance)

  1 Mar    -       Full Metal Jacket                (Militarised Masculinities)

  8 Mar    -       The Wall                            (Contested Spaces)

Reading Group

The Security Studies Reading Group (SSRG) is a forum for postgraduate students and staff to discuss a range of security-related issues. Topics covered since its inception in October 2007 include immigration and security, intelligence, terrorism, counter-insurgency (COIN), and (WMD) proliferation. Held weekly, each session centres around a theme, with a 10-15 minute paper usually being presented. This then forms the basis for discussion during the rest of the session. The forum also provides an environment for postgraduate research students to test ideas and open papers to informal peer scrutiny. To sign up to the SSRG e-mail list or for any other SSRG queries, contact James Malcolm (J.A.Malcolm@warwick.ac.uk). More information on the Reading Group is available here.