Deadline for submissions: Friday 7 July
The BISA working group on Russian and Eurasian Security and the BISA working group on International Law and Politics will hold a joint workshop bringing together expertise on Russia and on international law/politics. We seek papers that address the application or interpretation of international law in the former Soviet space.
Russia has promoted itself as a guardian of international law, and successive Russian Foreign Policy Concepts have warned that Russia would ‘counter the attempts by individual countries or groups of countries to revise the universally accepted norms of international law enshrined in universal documents such as the UN Charter’.
Russia has criticized its ‘creative’ application by the West, as especially detrimental, leading to the erosion of the basis of international law. Arguably the international environment has been particularly ‘unsettled’ since 9/11. Where legal arguments have not been accepted, legitimacy has been invoked to plug the gap. The very need to invoke legitimacy implies that existing international law is in some sense deficient or non-responsive.
This workshop seeks to bring together area expertise on Russian and Eurasian security with scholars working on international law to examine Russian discourse on, and practice of, international law. We invite papers that address different aspects of Russian discourse and practice in relation to international law, and those that address how the West has responded.
Attendance bursaries
We encourage applications from PhD students and will be offering a limited number of bursaries to cover participants’ travel and accommodation expenses. Allocated on the basis of need, these bursaries will cover up to £200 for participants registered at UK/EU/European institutions; and up to £400 for participants registered at non-UK/EU/European institutions. If you would like to be considered for a bursary, please include a 2-3 sentence explanation of your eligibility for funding within your application. Please note that successful recipients of a bursary must be registered members of BISA and of one of the host working groups, by the time of the workshop (http://www.bisa.ac.uk for membership).
Submission
Abstracts of up to 250 words and a short bio should be submitted by Friday 7th July, 2018, to either or both convenors: rachel.kerr@kcl.ac.uk or natasha.kuhrt@kcl.ac.uk
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