Specialist
Group on Ethnic Politics
Newsletter Autumn
2001
On the conference front, both APSA and ECPR went
very well. At APSA in
San Francisco we hosted sessions on ‘Peace-Building and Reconstruction
after Ethnic Conflict’, and ‘Responses to Ethnic Conflict: From
Prevention to Intervention’. The papers and presentations were in general
of high quality, attendance was good (we had around 20 attendees
at each session, despite their rather ‘unfriendly’ scheduling at
8.45am), and new partnerships and friendships were forged. Forty-eight
hours after getting back from San Francisco, we took the show on
the road again and headed down to the University of Kent at Canterbury
for the ECPR’ First General Conference. We
hosted three panels at Kent, all based around the theme of ‘Disputed
Territories’. In addition, Stefan hosted a panel on ‘The Long-term
Consequences of Forced Population Transfers’. The
presentations were excellent, discussion was lively, attendance
numerous, and once again new contacts were made, and old ones renewed. Our
thanks to everyone who in some way participated in the sessions.
Work on the encyclopaedia is still progressing, and
we are on schedule to meet the publication date. Other publishing ventures beckon, but in the absence of signed
contracts, fate shall not be tempted!
Once again, thanks for your support. Enjoy the journal and keep us informed. The
next issue of the newsletter will appear early next year. In the
meantime, we hope the following (strictly in alphabetical order)
will prove to be of interest to our many readers:
On Saturday 6 October, Professor Antony Alcock of
the University of Ulster will be speaking in Hungary on ‘Regional,
Ethnic and Linguistic Minorities and the Process of European Integration
in the 21st Century’. Professor
Alcock has also recently become a director of British Cultural
Studies, a charity aimed at those from the Unionist community who
missed out on educational opportunities during their youth. Professor
Alcock can be contacted on 028-70324200 or via ae.alcock@ulst.ac.uk.
Kate Bond, the Arts Development Officer of the University
of Ulster has details of the University’s forthcoming Cineversity
Film Programme. Further
details can be obtained by e-mailing Kate on kebond@ulst.ac.uk
Alan Bullion of the Open University has contacted us to signal
the forthcoming publications: ‘Sri Lanka: on the Brink’, in the
World Today, October 2001, and ‘India in Sierra Leone: a Case of “Muscular” Peacekeeping’,
in International Peacekeeping, Winter 2001-10-02
James Chin has recently produced the following works: ‘Mathari’s
Administration: Performance and Crisis in Governance’, Asia Pacific
Press, 2001 (with Ho Khai Leong); ‘Malaysia: the Barisan National
Supremacy’ in David Newman and John Fuh-sheng Hsieh (eds.), ‘How
Asia Votes’, Seven Bridges Press, 2001; and ‘The 1997 Singapore
General Election’ in ‘Singapore’, edited by Garry Rodan, Ashgate,
2001. James can be contacted at jchin@upng.ac.pg.
Kakhaber Dzebiasashvili of the Institut für Internationale Politik, Hamburg,
is currently conducting research on nation and state building issues
in the post Soviet area. Kakhaber
can be contacted at kakha21@hotmail.com.
Erika Harris’s book ‘Nationalism and Democratisation: Politics
of Slovakia and Slovenia’ will be published by Ashgate in February/March
2002. Erika has also been
conducting a wider ESRC-funded research project entitled: ‘Constructing
New National Identity: Europeanisation of Slovakia’, and can be
contacted at e.harris@leeds.ac.uk.
The Institute for Conflict Resolution (INCORE)
is running three events over the next couple of weeks: the closing
symposium for INCORE's Local
and International Learning Project (contact Anna Visser: anna@incore.ulst.ac.uk),
a Workshop on Researching Ethnic Conflict in Africa, jointly organised
with the British Council and the University of Ibadan, Nigeria
and sponsored by the United Nations University and the Ford Foundation
(contact Gillian Robinson: gillian@incore.ulst.ac.uk), and a workshop
on Mixed Marriages, jointly organised with the Institute for Conflict
Research (contact Anjoo Sharan Upadhyaya: anjoo@incore.ulst.ac.uk).
Additional details for these events can also be found on the INCORE
web site at http://www.incore.ulst.ac.uk.
The Japan Center for Preventive Diplomacy has contacted us about a range of activities. For
further details please consult their website at http://www.conflict-prevention.org.
On 4 October Cambridge University Press published ‘The
Australian People’, edited by James Jupp of the Australian
National University. For further details of the encyclopaedia contact
Cambridge University Press, The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge,
CB2 3RU
The Johns Hopkins University will be hosting the
18th Conference on Baltic Studies in June 2002. The
theme of the conference will be ‘The Baltic States in the Era of
Globalization. For further
details please contact Dr Robert A. Lorinskas at ralorin@siu.edu
On Thursday 18 October, SSEES will be hosting Professor
Tibor Pichler of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava. Professor Pichler will be speaking (in English)
on the subject of ‘From Culture to Politics, or the Importance
of Being Institutionalised’. Further
details can be obtained from Dr Kieran Williams, k.williams@ssees.ac.uk
Please let us know of any interesting activities—conferences,
workshops, publications, research projects you are involved in.
We’d love to receive and include more information from and about
our members (almost 500 by now) in the newsletter.
Best wishes,
Karl & Stefan