Centre for the Study of Political Community
Hosted in the Department of War Studies, in the School of Social Science and Public Policy, the Centre for the Study of Political Community inherits the remit of the old Centre for International Relations and seeks to conduct interdisciplinary research on questions relating to formations and re-formations of, and struggles over, political community in the context of globalised social, economic, and political relations. Animated by the challenges that this transnational context presents, the Centre starts with two assumptions; firstly, that formations of political community can no longer be confined to the state, but must be conceived as a dynamic and ever-changing process of transformation articulated locally, transnationally, and internationally, and secondly, that agents engaged in the formation of political community, from international institutions, to states, to new social movements, are at the same time constrained and enabled by structural continuity and change.
The Centre focuses on themes that reflect these complex relationships, including the challenges presented by external interventions, violence, mobility, crises, emergencies, and conflict for the formation and reformation of political community. The Centre will also conduct research on new conceptualizations of community and modes of social, political and ethical relationality that challenge traditional understandings of community.
The themes covered include transformations in state-citizen relations, governance and the management of populations, the postcolonial state, political subjectivity, and empire, sovereignty and the government of security, democratisation, resistance, and political activism, and the constitution and use of political space within and beyond the boundaries of the state, from the refugee camp to the street to the transnational spaces of global cities.
The Centre’s approach aims to put social and political theory and methodology to the service of the conceptual and empirical understanding of political community and its transformations in a globalised setting.
The MA programmes associated with the Centre for the Study of Political Community include the MA in International Relations and the MA in International Conflict Studies.
The coordinator is Professor Vivienne Jabri