The 58th Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association was hosted in 2008 by the Department of Politics and International Relations, Swansea University.
The conference had much that was familiar, mixed with a number of new features. The Graduate conference made a return after a years’ absence. Running from Monday-Tuesday lunchtime (31 March-1 April), and superintended by Lyndsey Harris, Chair of the Graduate Network, and Sean L’Estrange, the local organiser, it catered for around 50 graduate students. There were four sessions on employability, teaching, research grants and getting published. Monday evening saw a graduate reception, dinner, and drinks & karaoke.
The Annual Conference made use of a large commercial conference style marquee for registration/inquiries, the publishers’ exhibition and coffee/tea breaks. The Tuesday lunchtime registration surge appeared to go by in pretty ordered fashion, superintended by Sue Forster, the PSA conference officer, and Anne Edwards, the local conference administrator. Over the course of the three days over 500 delegates came by this way. Lunch was in the large grass-fronted Fulton House dining rooms, with views across Swansea bay.
The first two panel sessions on the Tuesday ran from 2.30- 6 PM and were held in the seminar rooms of the James Callaghan and Keir Hardie buildings. These were followed by the welcome reception, which was held in the marquee and featured speeches by Jonathan Tonge, PSA Chair, and Richard Davies, Swansea University’s Vice Chancellor. Following dinner, the Government and Opposition Leonard Schapiro Memorial lecture saw Andrew Gamble address the topic of the Western Ideology. He happily took questions, including a ‘come on girls’ cry from Joyce Mushaben, who pointed out the absence of a gender dimension in his talk. Tuesday closed with a ‘G & O’ reception and the conference quiz, presided over by Jon Tonge, and won this year by the Department of Government and International Politics at Manchester University.
Wednesday of conference saw three further multiple panels’ sessions running through the morning and early afternoon. A feature of this year’s conference was the organisation of panels into 26 panel series, with each panel series generally retaining the same meeting room throughout the conference. Feature panels included author meets critics’ sessions focusing on the work of Robert Talisse and Henrik Bang. There were also roundtable panels organised by the Labour Movements SG on New Labour and Think Tanks, featuring representatives of the Social Market Foundation, IPPR, Demos and Compass, and by the Security and Intelligence SG on the role of theory in intelligence studies.
At the same time, special event panels, featuring winners of the specialist group guest speaker competition, were held each session in the James Callaghan lecture theatre. Tuesday saw panels on conflict and democracy in South Asia, featuring Amita Shastri (San Francisco), and democracy and global protest, featuring the aforesaid Joyce Mushaben (Missouri-St Louis). On the Wednesday, Elizabeth Winter (British and Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group) gave an inside view on the politics of reconstruction in Afghanistan, Ned Franks (Queens Ontario) locked horns with Matthew Flinders on democracy and parliamentary accountability, and Virginia Sapiro (Boston), Yvonne Galligan and Terrell Carver spoke on issues of gender, conflict and democracy.
Two further highlights of the Wednesday of conference were the late afternoon plenary panel, and the conference dinner. The plenary panel on ‘Iraq and After: dilemmas of theory and practice’ was held in the Taliesin Theatre and was attended by around 150 delegates. It was chaired by Jack Spence (Kings, London) and featured presentations by Eric Davis (Rutgers), Anoush Ehteshami (Durham) and Gareth Stansfield (Exeter), all of whom again happily answered questions.
For the conference dinner, over 300 delegates were coached the short distance to the Brangwyn hall. Amidst the grand ballroom atmosphere and Sir Frank Brangwyn’s memorable post-First World War murals, delegates were treated to a civic reception and meal, and the award of the PSA prizes, bestowed by Dianne Pinderhughes, President of the American Political Science Association. The conference address was given by Dr Wolfgang Petritsch, one of Europe’s leading diplomats and the EU negotiator at the Kosovo peace talks, on the theme of ‘Democracy and peace-keeping in Kosovo and the Balkans’.
The final morning of conference saw the completion of all the panel series and two further events in the James Callaghan lecture theatre. The first was ‘an author meets critics’ session’ where Tariq Modood addressed a range of speakers on his recent book on multiculturalism. The second was a roundtable on the Governance of Britain, addressing a key topic in which the PSA itself has recently provided expert opinion to the Government. To close the conference, there was a buffet lunch in the Marquee, a farewell speech from the academic convenor, Jonathan Bradbury, much thanks to specialist group/panel convenors, and several very well-deserved bouquets of flowers.
PSA2008 at Swansea was designed to have a strong international-standard intellectual content. It was also designed to be friendly and relaxed. It was great to see so many international delegates, including representatives of the American, Australasian, Brazilian, Japanese, Korean and Thai political science associations. It was also gratifying to see such wide representation from across the profession in the UK, including a large number of well known names in the British political science profession. In its simultaneous celebration of diversity and the renewal of academic collegiality the annual PSA conference remains a very important resource. Onwards and forwards to Manchester and PSA2009! |
