2025-2026
12th December 2025
Visit to Museum of Modern Art Two, Edinburgh
Exhibition
Resistance: How Protest Shaped Britain and Photography Shaped Protest
Lunch & Discussion to Follow
2024-2025
2nd December 2024
Geoethics in the Anthropocene
Speaker: Robert Braun, Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna
2:00 – 2:30 PM, School V
Please join us on Monday, December 2nd, at 2:00 PM in School V for a discussion on ‘Geoethics in the Anthropocene’ by Dr Robert Braun, Senior Researcher for Science, Technology, and Social Transformation (STS) research group at the Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna and Associate Professor at Masaryk University, Brno. This event is sponsored by the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies We look forward to seeing many of you there.
Exposition
The Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) has rejected the proposal of its Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) to include the Anthropocene as a new, formalized epoch in the Geological Time Scale (GTS). The decision, later ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and its mother organization the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) sparked controversy within and beyond the geosciences. Analyzing contentious moments in science reveals the underlying dynamics of science and its interaction with broader society. Looking at what I call the “Anthropocene controversy” sheds light on the politics of geoscience, illustrating how science functions as a political process. The talk will focus on a geo-ethical stance rooted in what Isabelle Stengers calls “slow science,” a thoughtful approach to considering unknown matters and their connections to existing knowledge. I suggest a Science and Technology Studies (STS) and ethnomethodology-inspired critical/radical reflexivity as an ethical method, emphasizing insecurity regarding basic assumptions, discourse, and practices used in describing reality. A geo-ethical stance reflective of our critical juncture in Earth’s history should integrate radical conceptual implications of revolutionary ideas, such as quantum theory interpretations, rather than avoid them. The main goal of a quantum-inspired geoethics is to decenter the universal and hegemonic Newtonian/Cartesian worldview and offer a radically constructivist and STS-inspired critique of the politics of reality enactment. Thus, I propose a geo-ethics attuned to becomings, matterings, and more-than-human events, recognizing various agential possibilities that give rise to new forms of temporality and spatiality, also in constituting and instituting geological time and space.
Speaker Biography
Robert Braun completed his PhD in philosophy in 2002 and his Habilitation in sociology 2021. He is senior researcher at the research group Science, Technology and Social Transformation at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, and associate professor at Masaryk University, in Brno. His research focus is the ontological politics of science and technology transitions and Anthropocene violence. Among his books Corporate Stakeholder Responsibility (CEU Press, 2019) has been selected as one of three best books of 2019 by the European Management Academy (EURAM). He has published, inter alia, in History and Theory, Science, Humanities and Social Sciences Communication, Journal of Responsible Innovation, Mobilities, Mobility Humanities and Transfers. His last book, Post-Automobility Futures (with Richard Randell), is published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2022. They currently work on a new book project on the World of Anthropos: Sovereign Power and Anthropocene Apparatuses.
28th November 2024
‘The Contested Use of Staatraison/ Raison d’Etat Against the Backdrop of the Gaza Conflict’
Speaker: Antje Wiener, University of Hamburg
4:00 – 5:30 PM, School V
Please join us on Thursday, November 28nd, at 4:00 PM in School V for a discussion on ‘The Contested Use of Staatraison/ Raison d’Etat Against the Backdrop of the Gaza Conflict’ by Dr Antje Wiener, the Chair of Political Science at the University of Hamburg, By-Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences. The event is jointly sponsored by the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and the Centre for Law and Governance. We look forward to seeing many of you there.
Exposition
The talk discusses the contested use of ‘Staatsraison / Raison d’Etat’ against the backdrop of the Gaza conflict. In light of the horrific October 7 attacks by Hamas in 2023, the long dormant norm has been recently been reactivated by German government representative to demonstrate ‘unwavering solidarity with Israel’. Over the past year, the maxim has become a regular feature in German political discourse. However, despite this frequent use, the norm’s meaning and implication remain widely unknown. This accounts for both observers inside and outside Germany alike. To explore the norm’s actual meaning-in-use the talk draws on norms research in International Relations (IR). Against that analytical background, Staatsraison is defined as a fundamental norm which carries relatively broad moral reach, yet fairly unspecified behavioural instructions. Unless further specified or explained, therefore, the degree of contestation generated by the norm’s use is expected to be high. Two scenarios are possible then. In the best-case scenario public institutions facilitate proactive contestation by way of engaged and constructive public debate. By contrast, in the worst-case scenario where such constructive dialogue is not facilitated, objection expressed as reactive contestation is expected to generate resentment, uncertainty, and potentially conflict. In order to identify the norm’s actual meaning and possible effect the paper undertakes an assessment of the norm’s meanings-in-use from different analytical angles, including history, media, and science.
Author Bibliography
Professor Antje Wiener, FAcSS MAE holds the Chair of Political Science, especially Global Governance at the University of Hamburg where she is a member of the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences as well as the Law Faculty. She is an elected By-Fellow of Hughes Hall University of Cambridge, a Fellow of the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences, and a Member of the Academia Europea. Her research and teaching centres on International Relations (IR) theory, especially norms research and contestation theory. And previously she held Chairs in International Studies at Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Bath and taught at the Universities of Stanford, Carleton, Sussex and Hannover. Current research projects include ‘Contested Climate Justice in Sensitive Regions’ at the Cluster of Excellence Climate, Climatic Change and Society (CLICCS) among others. She is co-founding editor of Global Constitutionalism (CUP, since 2012 ). And she also edits the Norm Research in International Relations Series (Springer) Her book ‘Contestation and Constitution of Norms in Global International Relations’ (CUP 2018) was awarded the International Law Section’s Book Prize in 2020. ‘Contesting the World: Norm Research in Theory and Practice’ co-edited with Phil Orchard was published in 2024. (CUP 2024). She currently spends the Michaelmas term at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law in Cambridge where she is a DAAD Cambridge Hub Visiting Fellow.
22nd November 2024
Book Launch: ‘Born of War in Colombia: Reproductive Violence and Memories of Absence‘
Author: Tatiana Sánchez Parra, University of Edinburgh
4:30 – 6:00 PM, Arts Lecture Theatre
Please join us on Friday, November 22nd, at 4:30 PM in the Arts Lecture Theatre for the launch of Born of War in Colombia: Reproductive Violence and Memories of Absence, a new Rutgers University Press book by Dr Tatiana Sánchez Parra, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. The event is sponsored by the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and will feature a book talk by Dr Sánchez Parra, comments from Dr Roxani Krystalli, Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations, and an opportunity for Q&A and discussion.
We look forward to seeing many of you there.
Exposition
‘Born of War in Colombia’ follows whispers about children born of conflict-related sexual violence in Colombia. It addresses why, despite their many forms of visibility, they remain unseen by human rights and transitional justice actors. In Colombia, there are generations of children born of conflict-related sexual violence. Whispers of their presence have travelled outside their communities in the form of naming practices that associated them with their biological fathers, perpetrators of all forms of violence. They also exist in their mothers’ testimonies of sexual violence and within the country’s domestic reparations programme, which was the first in the world to include them as victims entitle to reparations. These forms of visibility, however, have yet to translate into concrete strategies for working with them and their mothers, understanding their situations, and guaranteeing their well-being. The book draws on feminist ethnography with an Afro-Colombian community that endured a four-year paramilitary confinement and of the country’s domestic reparation programme. It reveals how a harm-centred model of transitional justice has converged with a restricted notion of gendered victimhood and the patriarchal politics of reproduction, rendering the bodies of people born of conflict-related sexual violence unintelligible to policymakers and scholars seeking to address the consequences of war in Colombia. The book also engages with the reproductive justice framework and directly addresses issues of reproductive violence. In that way, it also contributes to broadening notions of gendered victimhood and reproductive freedom.
Author Biography
Tatiana Sánchez Parra is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. Her background is in anthropology, human rights, and sociology. Tatiana’s research is situated at the intersection of socio-legal, feminist, and Latin American studies. Her research focuses on issues of feminist peacebuilding, reproductive violence, and reproductive justice in contexts of war and political transitions.
2023-2024
September 2023
Multivocality and the Veteran: Using Creativity and Collaboration to Create New Knowledge
September 2023
Collaborative Research with Veterans: Creative Methods Discussion
2022-2023
November 2022
Book Talk: ‘Keeping the Bones Alive’ by Graham Denyer Willis
The Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies in conjunction with the Centre for Amerindian, Latin American Caribbean Studies at the University of St St Andrews
November 2022
“Mediation in Ukraine before and after conflict“
Guest Talk by Hanna Dushkova at the University of St Andrews