Chair Timofey Agarin; Vice-Chair Allison McCulloch

Greetings!

As the newly elected Chair, I would like to provide you, as members of RC 14, with an update on our recent activities and our future plans.

Recent RC 14 conference meetings

Joint Conference on 'Rethinking Territoriality. Between Independence and Interdependence' (Edinburgh, Scotland, September 2015)

The Research Committee's latest colloquium in September 2015 at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland was a tremendous success. For the first time, we joined forces with two other RCs - RC 28 (Comparative Federalism and Multilevel Governance) and RC 50 (Politics of Language)  - for a three-day event under the framework theme of ‘Territorial politics.’ More than 70 papers presented from both young and established scholars.

IPSA World Congress (Poznan, Poland, July 2016)

RC 14 was among the most active and visible research committees at the 2016 World Congress in Poznan. With 18 sponsored and co-sponsored panels, the RC is in very good standing in anticipation of the Brisbane World Congress in 2018 (see more below). A full listing of panels from Pozznan can be found at: https://wc2016.ipsa.org/events/istanbul2016/session/rc14-politics-and-ethnicity. By clicking on a panel name, you can see the list of abstracts for that panel.

Upcoming Conferences and Meetings

Joint Conference on Democratization and Constitutional Design in Divided Societies (Nicosia, Cyprus, tentatively scheduled for June 2017)

With the next World Congress scheduled for 2018 in Brisbane, Australia, we are planning to host an interim joint colloquium in 2017. Allison and I, working in conjunction with our colleague, Neo Loizides (University of Kent), are in the initial planning stages for the conference, which will take place in Nicosia, Cyprus in late June 2017. We are exploring collaborating with RC 28 (Comparative Federalism and Multilevel Governance) and RC13 (Comparative Democratisation) to host the meeting, which should allow us access to IPSA funds. We are now in the process of crafting a call for papers and will be issuing it shortly to the list and we would like to encourage you all to apply for participation and disseminate it widely. Watch this space for more details!

IPSA World Congress (Brisbane, Australia, July 2018)

Looking ahead to the next World Congress, we have asked Stephanie Lawson (Macquarie University) to act as our local contact person. She will help us to identify opportunities early on for formal and informal meetings during the WC but will also help to bring the focus on Ethnicity in Politics to the fore, especially on the issue of indigenous peoples. One possibility we are exploring is to have a plenary session on the theme of Ethnicity and Politics at the WC in Brisbane.

The Call for Papers for the World Congress should be expected in July 2017. At that time, I will issue a call to our membership for paper and panel proposals directly in order to better facilitate the creation of panels for Brisbane. We encourage you all to apply for participation and to disseminate the CfP widely.