“Politics on a Human Scale: Approaches to Practice in Policy, Politics and IR” was the title of a workshop jointly organized between the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Security Research, its Academy of Government and Cardiff University’s Department of Politics and International Relations. The workshop, held on the 6th of May, focussed on ongoing research projects which aim at zooming in on activities and practices of politics.  The workshop discussions centred around different approaches to practice in our research with a view to rethink the theory-methods package in studies of practice. What are the implications of drawing on certain concepts for methodology and research practices? How do we relate research practices to attempts of generalising and abstracting? The workshop was a very productive environment to address these questions. From Cardiff, Alena Drieschova, Hannah Hughes and myself participated in the event.

I gave talk on my ongoing counter-piracy governance project, particularly developing the methodological reasoning. I discussed what we might learn from alchemism and their interest in the occult and experimentation. Arguing that alchemism revolves around three core concepts – expertise, experiment, experience – I outlined how these can organize a research process and our thinking about it.

Given the shared research interest of both universities in the field of practice research, but also areas of research such as devolution, we intend to institutionalize Cardiff-Edinburgh research meetings in the future.

On May, the 5th, I will be giving a talk at the Centre for Security Research at the University of Edinburgh. In the talk I revisit the rise and fall of Somali piracy. The first part investigates how we can explain the emergence of piracy, by paying attention to structural and agency oriented arguments, as well as the known set of factors that trigger piracy. The second part investigates the building blocks of counter-piracy and why these were so successful. I pay particular attend to legal and military coordination and the role of the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia in steering the development of these processes. I end with an outline of what the policy consequences of this story are, and what the broader lessons for the debates in global security governance. Further info on the talk is available here.

Next week (28-29th of April),  I will be hosting a small workshop on current research on piracy and maritime security. The workshop titled “New Voices in Piracy Studies” brings together 10 junior researchers from across Europe working on projects in the field. In addition Dr. Marcus Houben (former head of the support team for the EEAS presidency of the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia) and Dr. Anja Shortland (Kings College) will give keynotes and act as discussants in the debate.

The background for the event is that piracy off the coast of Somalia is contained, but not eradicated. West Africa and Southeast Asia continue to see high levels of piracy. Piracy studies has emerged over the last decade as a trans-disciplinary project that is geared at theorizing and understanding the phenomenon of piracy as well as studying the institutional responses to it. As a field piracy studies is linked to various other concerns, such as those in maritime security, criminology, or global governance. At the event we will discuss ongoing research on contemporary piracy and the responses to it, as well as related maritime security issues. The workshop aims at addressing three particular questions, that is,
1) To identify the gaps in our understanding of piracy (and maritime security threats) and the response to it
2) To outline how studies of piracy can contribute to the wider debates in maritime security, international security, international relations or international law
3) To discuss how research can contribute to the policy discussion on the responses to piracy and other maritime security challenges.

As part of my tour through the US, I will be giving two talks presenting some of the results of my ESRC funded research project on counter-piracy governance. On Wednesday, 30th of March I am giving a talk at the U.S. Naval War College. The talk is titled “Learning from the Fight against piracy: Lessons for maritime security governance” and draws on my article in Global Affairs as well as more recent results of my work with the CGPCS lessons learned project. On Friday, 1st of April I will give a presentation at McGill University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies. I will discuss the case of the High Risk Area controversy within the CGPCS, how a practice theoretical vocabulary allows to decipher this controversy, and what broader lessons for global governing the case holds.

The University of Portsmouth is organizing a half-day conference titled “Counter-piracy and maritime security: addressing Security challenges in the Gulf of Guinea” on 9 March 2016. I will be attending and give a presentation titled “Maritime Security and the Blue Economy – understanding the link” which draws on a paper I am co-authoring with Jessica Larssen (Copenhagen). The paper explores the relation between the maritime security and blue economy agenda in the light of work on the security-development nexus. We argue for the importance of mainstreaming the maritime dimension of international security and development in a way that neither follows a “security first”, nor a “economy first” logic. The full program of the event is available here. Here is the summary of my talk:  Continue reading →