3 x 15 Doctoral research seminars 2019-20

We start the new academic year’s departmental research seminar with a new format which is designed to showcase the exciting work that is being undertaken by the research students in the Graduate School of the Department of Politics. Each speaker will present for up to 15 minutes on their doctoral topic and this will be followed by a question and answer session on the three presentations. All are welcome.

1.Ruth Kelly: Using storytelling to cultivate epistemic justice: experiences from Bangladesh and Uganda

Practitioners in human rights and the development sector are often deeply committed to justice and social change. But the stories and frames that practitioners rely on often replicate tropes that hinder that change. My PhD research shows that practitioners should look to familiar, accessible cultural practices to reveal alternative ideas and proposals, like storytelling, oral poetry and song. I am developing this argument as part of decolonising, collaborative research with scholars, activists and artists in Bangladesh and Uganda. In my postdoctoral research, I will explore the extent to which such cultural practices can be understood as a form of theorising.

2. Matthew Barlow: Governing through Emergency: Taxation in Argentina under the Kirchner Governments (2003 –2015)

Following the 2001 debt default, the Argentine Political Economy shifted in the post-crisis period. Extraordinary fiscal measures were implemented by an emergency government in an attempt to (re)build Argentine state capacity. Some of these emergency tax policies were then normalised by the Kirchner Governments which helped fund state-led development programmes and an ideological progressive agenda. This thesis explores whether, through emergency governance, that state capacity was (re)built during Kirchnerismo.

3. Erik Cardona-Gomez: The Recognition of the Indigenous Right to Self-determination

The relationship between settler societies and indigenous communities is a recurrent topic in the literature of multiculturalism. The reason for this is because it is one that involves issues of inclusion and cultural difference. However, the argument that I present is that multicultural political theory does not capture the normative claims of indigenous communities in settler societies. Instead, I argue that granting some level of self-government on the grounds of historical injustice and structural injustice, empowers indigenous communities to hold the settler state accountable. Second, I argue that it allows guaranteeing the protection of the individual rights of the members of the indigenous communities since this form of self-government is one based around the principle of joint-governance.