COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
ANNUAL PGR CONFERENCE 2012
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
DAY ONE: THURSDAY 03/05/12
REGISTRATION
09:00 – 09:15
WELCOME ADDRESS 09:15 – 09:30 (LECTURE A)
(DEBRA MYHILL, ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR RESEARCH)
SESSION 1
09:30 – 11:30
PANEL A: ROLE OF LAW IN SOCIETY
CHAIR: PROFESSOR MELANIE WILLIAMS
Daniel
Bedford
Thomas
Dunk
LECTURE A
This paper analyses the way in which the concept of human dignity is used in
law for the purposes of grounding responsibilities to oneself and for regulating
Treating the humanity in the relationship between consenting adults. It will bring to light the diverse
your own person as an
ways in which dignity is currently used in UK law for this purpose. This
end in itself
includes requiring mentally incapacitated children to wear clothes against their
wishes, the regulation of prostitution and the prohibition of assisted suicide.
The Individual in the
Drafting of International
Law?
Charlie
Bishop
Not by Law Alone: A
Critique of English
Law in relation to
Battered Women Who
Kill
Rossella
Pisconti
Juridical Rape and the
Court’s Disbelief
This paper will consider the place of the individual within drafting International
law. The paper will challenge the traditional doctrine that international law is
created by states, for states, NGOs and eventually individuals. This traditional
theoretical doctrine fails to take into account the growing realities of how
international law is created; this paper will attempt to fill the gap between the
realities and the theoretical doctrine.
Until recently, violence against wives was both legal and socially acceptable.
Despite recent reforms to ‘domestic violence’ legislation, this type of abuse
remains prevalent and is still not being appropriately dealt with by the various
state agencies.
This paper will contribute the conference by providing a theoretical critique of
the law relating to domestic violence, aiming to demonstrate that the law has
been constructed in a way that excludes many of the concerns of women.
This paper focuses on consent in rape jurisprudence from a conceptual
Wittgensteinian approach. The aim is to explore the legal meaning of the
absence of consent in some rape cases where the complainant has been
disbelieved during the trial, in prejudicial manner.
PANEL B: DEBATES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
CHAIR: DR ANDREW SCHAAP
Gabriel
Thebolt
Biao Zhang
Jan
Smolenski
Sarah
Chave
Towards a StructureAgency Solution
The Second Great
Debate Revisited
Radicalizing or
Transcending Liberal
Democracy
Reconceptualising
‘economic man’ in an
age of uncertainty
COFFEE BREAK
LECTURE B
This presentation about using various terminology, the structure-agency
problem which has been elucidated by countless thinkers since the classical
period, and it is most effectively presented for metaphysicians in the context of
causation and identity.
This paper is argument about challenge the conventional understanding of the
Second Great Debate merely as exchanges revolving around methodology
and without entailing any theoretical concerns with the subject matter of
international relations.
This paper will compare and assess Mouffe’s democratic agonism and Žižek’s
revolutionism, and point to their main advantages and weaknesses in
providing an alternative to real existing liberal democracies. I claim that the
noticeable differences in the conceptual language between Mouffe and Žižek
are not merely a question of rhetoric but express fundamental theoretical
differences in their ways of connecting capitalism and democracy
This presentation will explain why the conception of ‘economic man’ is a
social construction and the problems that this creates for a sustainable and
just sharing of the earth’s resources. I then use insights from eco-feminism,
ecological economics, anthropology, complexity theory and Sen and
Nussbaum’s Human Capabilities model to explore the potential contribution
that reconceptualising ‘economic man’ could contribute to the challenges
posed to us in the Bruntland Commision statement
11:30 – 12:00 (ATRIUM)
SESSION 2 12:00 – 13:30
PANEL A: ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN SOCIETY
CHAIR: DR MATTHIAS VARUL
Daniel
Smith
Victor
Gazis
The Enigma of the
YouTube Celebrity
Community Cohesion in
the Virtual World
Facebook: EFL Teacher
Heba
Elghotmy Preparation
LECTURE A
This paper argues that the modern-gift and modern-self have overlapping
aspects of which YouTube makes evident. But YouTube’s potential for
democratic egality is problematized through a drive to hiearchisation
established through promotional endorsements by these YouTube
celebrities.
This research shows that many of the essential elements of video games,
especially MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Play Games),
although seemingly one aspect of an increasingly isolated population actually
incorporate and indeed rely upon factors that mirror those crucial and
beneficial aspects of traditional sports mentioned above.
This paper explore some of the challenges the Egyptian EFL pre-service
teachers encounter during their preparation programme as a result of their
lack of a path by which they can reflect freely without opinion suppression.
PANEL B: RESEARCH METHODS IN CONTEXT
CHAIR: DR VICTORIA BASHAM
This presentation will discuss the challenges of developing
Methods that do not exist a method informed by philosophy and sociology of science
for exploring methods that ideas and standard health research practices that aims to
do not quite exist
explore current methods of health research synthesis.
Mila Petrova
Different Modes of
Interview: interview
schedule and four modes
of delivery
Hazel Bending
Participatory Methods for
Understanding Social
Systems
Fiona Wotton
LUNCH
LECTURE B
The interview can be characterised as a conversation with a
purpose Kvale (1996), in which the researcher uses a
number of high level communication skills to manage the
relationship, maintain control of the content and mine
relevant information from the participant. With the
increased use of the internet for day to day communication
we can no longer assume that the researcher and their
participants will be in the same room or indeed continent.
This paper will investigate participatory approaches to
research in which researcher and community work together
to determine the outcomes and purpose of the inquiry.
Through an examination of feminist debates on
methodology including reflection on self, representation
and power relations, the account will aim to explore the
challenges for researcher accountability in data collection
and interpretation.
13:30 – 14:30 (ATRIUM)
SESSION 3 14:30 – 16:00
PANEL A: PALESTINE
CHAIR: DR KLEIDA MULAI
Tahani Mustafa
Seyed Borhani
Issa Perla
Security Sector Reform in
the Occupied Palestinian
Territories
The Israel/Palestine
Question and its
Extension in Knowledge
Production
LECTURE A
This paper will scrutinise the assertion that peace building and
state building operations are mutually reinforcing.
The aim of this paper is to examine the nature of the production
of academic knowledge about the Isarel/Palestine question.
This presentation argue that the link between the
Palestinian youth and the political factions is an unstable
Political Participation and one, dramatically different from their parents’ generation,
Representation:Palestinian and that the social practices linking the youth to the
Youth in Lebanon
factions are based on the financial needs of the youth as
well on their desire to carry out the legacy of their parents.
PANEL B: DIVISION AND UNITY
CHAIR: DR CRAIG LARKIN
LECTURE B
Tamam Mango
Privatizing Cities
and Changing the
Nature of
Downtowns
Mohammad Mustafa
Religious
Nationalism in the
Middle East
The Struggle for
Dominance in the
21st Century
Kurdish National
Liberation
Movement
Sait Keskin
Across the Middle East, Real Estate Holding Companies (REHCOs)
have been used as stimulus tools promoting development. Simply,
REHCOs are huge development companies granted expropriation
rights, with strong links to government backed by transnational
investors. These companies span from Levant to Gulf, with examples
in Riyadh, Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia; Aqaba and Abdali in
Jordan; and Beirut in Lebanon, emerging as significant components of
cities.
This study will focus on these Islamic political parties with the
emphasis on the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), in the Kurdistan
region of Iraq, which I see as a reflection of this on-going
transformation. I am interested in the extent to which an examination
of the Kurdish phenomenon -- with its special features -- elucidates
this region-wide process.
This research project compares and contrasts two Kurdistan’s
predominant political parties’ struggle to dominate Kurdistan
National Liberation Movement-KNLM and their change of
national strategy through the lens of Nationalism and Social
Movements Theory since 1961.
COFFEE BREAK
16:00 – 16:30 (ATRIUM)
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
16:30 – 18:00 (LECTURE A)
Solonian Citizenship: Democracy, Conflict, Participation
Andreas Kalyvas is Associate Professor in Politics at the New School for Social Research
in New York. His research interests include democratic theory and the history of
political ideas. He is the author of Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary and
(with Ira Katznelson) Liberal Beginnings.
WINE RECEPTION
18:00 – 19:30 (ATRIUM)
DAY TWO: FRIDAY 04/05/12
SESSION 4 09:00 – 10:30
PANEL A: CULTURE AND IDENTITY
CHAIR: PROFESSOR HASHEM AHMADZADEH
LECTURE A
Theeb
Aldossry
Celebrations in Emergence
Consumer Culture in Saudi
Arabia
This Paper discusses the significance of social and religious
festivities and celebrations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and
how and to what extent the increasing influence of Western
consumer culture has contributed to changes in those.
Mahroo
Rashidirostami
The Problematics of Writing a
History of Kurdish Theatre
This paper aims to discuss the implications of the antinationalist trend as bitter pills for Kurdish minorities who
are excluded from major history-books and anthologies
published in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, the countries with
Kurdish populations.
Sukru
Yurtsver
European Social Identity and
Social Capital
In this paper is going to deal with two contested concepts in
social sciences in the last two decades. One of them is social
capital and the other is the European identity. The paper
particular interest will be on whether social capital has an impact
on the formation of the European identities
PANEL B: PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
CHAIR: TBC
LECTURE B
James Lowe
‘Normal Development’ in
the Biological Sciences
The concept of ‘normal development’, when relating to the
biological development of an individual organism, is one which
has been comparatively neglected in the history and philosophy
of biology, despite considerable recent interest in developmental
biology in general, and its relations with other areas of biology
such as evolution and genetics. Yet the idea of ‘normal
development’ relates quite deeply to how development can be
understood in the light of evolution and genetics, and how these
fields can be understood in the light of our knowledge about
development.
Tarquin Holmes
The Introduction of the
Concept of Wild-Type into
Early Transmission Genetics
& its Persistence into the
Present Day
Wild-type’ is a fundamental part of the terminological and
conceptual framework of genetics, but in its use refers to
domesticated organisms raised in artificial conditions which are
unrepresentative of their species’ ‘typical’ range of variation.
This paper investigates how this apparent incongruity came
about.
COFFEE BREAK
10:30 – 11:00 (ATRIUM)
SESSION 5
PANEL A: WORLD POLITICS
CHAIR: DR JOHN HEATHERSHAW
11:00 – 13:00
LECTURE A
Aleksandra
Fernandes da
Costa
Understanding corporate
political practice from a
sociological perspective
This paper aims to i.), propose a conceptual framework for
approaching and understanding the political practice of
corporate representatives based on sociological concepts
elaborate by Pierre Bourdieu and ii.), provide empirical insights
into the study of corporate political practices.
Thomas Owen
Towards a Sociology of the Iraq
Inquiry
This paper will outline the methodological and conceptual
framework that I use in my thesis to empirically examine how
the liberal state uses publicity to justify itself in the actually
existing practice of the public inquiry. Through this ‘sociology
of pubic inquiry’ I outline how the inquiry constitutes its own
public sphere, epistemological assumptions and normative
commitments in pursuit of ‘finding fact and learning lessons’.
Jeremy
Wildeman
The Effects of Canadian
Foreign Aid in Palestinian West
Bank
This paper will contend that the apparent failure of aid in the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict is better found by referring to a
wider theoretical debate on aid itself. This debate dates back to
a 19th Century theoretical polemic between Florence
Nightingale and Henri Dunant.
Zamira
Dildorbekova
Multi-layered implications of
research on Islam in Central
Asia
This project/presentation tries to explain multiple implications
(both contextual and theoretical) on research in Central Asia,
and Tajikistan in particular, and offers an alternative way of
discussing the nature of Islamic renewal in Central Asia.
PANEL B: APPROACHES TO ISLAM
CHAIR: PROFESSOR IAN NETTON
LECTURE B
Walead
Mosaad
Religious Legitimacy and
Authority in Egypt after January
25th
This presentation about the debates that have emerged
regarding the parameters of civil society and the
appropriateness of the reach and influence of the shariah
(Islamic law) or lack thereof.
Hussein Marei
Disentangling the ‘Islamist’
Victory in Egypt
This presentation about the rise of Islamist parties in Tunisia
and Egypt and the trend continues across the Middle East.
Bashir Damji
The Impact of Arab Spring on
Islamic Studies
Hamid Reza
Maghsoodi
Comparative Study of the
Approaches of the Maktab-e
Tafkik and the Akhbariy School
to the Epistemology of the
Functionality of Intellect (Aql).
This paper explores the impact, direct and consequential, of the
change engulfing the region to the broader field of Islamic
Studies. It explores general trends within contemporary Islamic
discourses in the region. Ideas of scholars like Driss Hani, a
Moroccan Shi’a activist; Sheikh Ahmad Tayyib, the Mufti of
al-Azhar; and others will be scrutinized in respect to their
influence on the masses in general and students of Islam in
particular.
This presentation attempts to answer one of the key questions
about scriptural Islam, and the role of aql in different realms of
Shi’a thought , questions like language and Quranic
interpretation, rational proving for the existence of God and
other tough questions by examining different approaches
toward the Epistemology of the functionality of intellect
accuring between these two close schools .
CLOSING ADDRESS BY LEO RODRIGUES
(CHAIRPERSON OF THE ORGANISING
COMMITTEE)
13:00 – 13:15 (LECTURE A)
LUNCH
13:15 – 14:00 (ATRIUM)
Poster presentations
Poster 1
Poster 2
Poster 3
Poster 4
Poster 5
Alireza Memari Hanjani
Taaziz Grada
Stacy N’jie
Matt Baker
Kate Hornblower
Lizzy Sartory
Hayley Jarrett
Lucy Drage
Hannah Chiswell
Jan Pieter Beetz
Oral Peer Review, Collaborative Revision and Genre in L2
Writing
An Investigation into Libyan EFL
Training experiences of students on the Doctorate for
Educational Child and Community Psychology
Rising to the Food Security Challenge
Politics: Social science or humanity and is there really a
difference?
THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING THIS YEAR’S CONFERENCE. WE HOPE THAT YOU HAVE ENJOYED IT AND WILL CONSIDER
PRESENTING NEXT YEAR. ANY FEEDBACK YOU HAVE WOULD BE WELCOME AND CAN BE SENT TO SSISGRADUATERESEARCH@EXETER.AC.UK.
BEST WISHES FROM THE ORGANISING COMMITTEE