We are excited to announce the speakers for the Centre for the Study of Democracy Autumn 2021 Seminar Series. All are welcome, but registration is required.
- ‘First Ladies of Authoritarianism’ - Mustafa Elmenshawi (Lancaster University)
Tuesday 12 October 2021, 4-5.30pm
The protests which swept the Arab region as of 2011 strikingly singled out the leaders’ wives as the target of wrath. This paper argues that wives are key actors dually stabilizing and de-stabilizing their husbands as authoritarian leaders. By de-gendering the relational connection between the leader and his wife, the leader’s wife is repositioned in the paper as a more autonomous partner or holder of the joint account of authoritarianism, alongside the authoritarian husband. In contrast to much of the literature on authoritarianism, which is arguably mostly focused on structural, collective and externalized elements, this paper – and the larger project of which it is part – seeks to explore roles, identities and powers of the first ladies in a more systematic manner, through the mixed use of quantitative and qualitative analysis.
Dr Mustafa Elmenshawy is a Post Doctoral Researcher at Lancaster University. He holds a PhD in politics from the University of Westminster and an MA in Middle East Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). His main research interests concern the interplay between discourse and politics in the Middle East. His latest publication is Sovereignty alignment process: strategies of regime survival in Egypt, Libya and Syria’, which was published in Third World Quarterly earlier this year.
- ‘Researching Female Masculinities in the Gender Wars’ - Finn Mackay (University of East London)
Tuesday 26 October 2021, 4-5.30pm
In this talk Finn will discuss experiences of researching AFAB (assigned female at birth) transgender, transmasc, non-binary, gender non-conforming, butch, stud, and masculine-of-centre masculine identities and borders for the newly published book Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars. The talk will also reflect on the challenges of writing about this subject at a time of burgeoning sex and gender conservatism, when the LGBTQI+ community is under attack from a variety of forces across political spectrums.
Finn Mackay is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of the West of England. Finn has published widely in the areas of feminist theory and activism, gender identity and borders with the LGBTQI+ community and is the author of Radical Feminism: Feminist Activism in Movement (Palgrave, 2015) and Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars: The Politics of Sex (Bloomsbury, 2021).
- ‘The Great Recoil: Politics after Populism and the Pandemic’ - Paolo Gerbaudo (King’s College London)
Tuesday 9 November 2021, 4-5.30pm
What comes after neoliberalism? Looking back to the role of the state in Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hegel, Gramsci and Polanyi, in The Great Recoil (Verso, 2021), Paolo Gerbaudo fleshes out the contours of the different statisms and populisms that inform contemporary politics. Neoliberalism, the ideology that presided over decades of market globalisation, is on trial, while state intervention is making a spectacular comeback amid lockdowns, mass vaccination programmes, deficit spending and climate planning. The central issue in dispute is what mission the post-pandemic state should pursue: whether it should protect native workers from immigration and the rich against redistributive demands, as proposed by the right’s authoritarian protectionism; or reassert social security and popular sovereignty against the rapacity of financial and tech elites, as advocated by the left’s social protectivism. Gerbaudo argues that it is only by addressing the widespread sense of exposure and vulnerability that socialists may turn the present phase of involution into an opportunity for social transformation.
Dr Paolo Gerbaudo is Reader in Digital Culture and Society and the Director of the Centre for Digital Culture at King’s College London. His work focuses on the transformation of politics in the digital era. He is the author of a number of books, amongst which Tweets and the Streets (Pluto Press, 2012), The Mask and the Flag (Hurst & Company, 2017) and, most recently, The Digital Party (Pluto Press, 2018).
- 'Out in the cold: Prisons in Iceland and the experience of foreign national prisoners in them' - Francis Pakes (University of Portsmouth)
Tuesday 23 November 2021, 4-5.30pm
Francis Pakes will discuss the unique nature of prisons in Iceland, which are small, calm, and often set in remote, perhaps even idyllic, settings. What is it like to serve time there? And what is it like for foreign national prisoners, for whom, imprisonment is often particularly difficult. How do foreign national prisoners adapt to imprisonment on the edge of Europe? This talk will utilise photographs, stories, interview data and observations to come an understanding of the nature of prisons in Iceland and the specific challenges and adaptations that foreign national prisoners face.
Francis Pakes is Professor of Criminology at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He is an expert on Nordic prisons and has spent time in the role of 'quasi prisoner' in Iceland's two open prisons. He has extensively written on prisons in Iceland, Norway and his native the Netherlands. His book, Comparative Criminal Justice, is in its fourth edition.
- 'Playing in Traffic: The Next Decade of Convict Criminology' - Jeffrey Ian Ross (University of Baltimore)
Tuesday 7 December 2021, 4-5.30pm
Once registered to the online events, a link to the talk will be sent to you closer to the date.
