News

IR Department hosting symposium on War2: Political Violence & New Media

On 7-8 October 2009, the Department will be hosting a symposium on War2: Political Violence & New Media. Today, war is conducted not only by the dispatch of Tomahawks in the air or Kalashnikovs and suicide attacks on the ground but also by means of bytes, tweets, digital images, and social networking forums. (New) media technology, in other words, has become a medium of war and diplomacy. Contact and registration details are on the website.

The Oceanic Conference on International Studies (OCIS)

The University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington are pleased to jointly host OCIS IV in Auckland in July 2010. The Oceanic Conference on International Studies (OCIS) builds on the successful legacy of OCIS I-III in Canberra, Melbourne and Brisbane bringing Oceania’s largest International Relations (IR) and International Studies conferences across the Tasman for the first time.

IR Department hosting second Australian IPE workshop

On 23-24 April 2009, the Department hosted the second Australian IPE workshop. It provided an opportunity for staff and PhD students to present work in progress and discuss contemporary developments in the global economy. For further information email ipe2009@anu.edu.au.

Bill Tow organised major international workshop on Australia-Japan security relations

On 10-12 March, William Tow, Professor of international security, hosted a major workshop on evolving Australia-Japan security relations. This event, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Australia-Japan Foundation, hosted six experts from major Japanese universities and think tanks to discuss Asian security issues, and to focus particularly on on alliance politics between these two regional democracies. Along with six Australian counterparts, the Japanese assessed specific aspects of evolving Australian bilateral security and diplomatic relations with Japan. Professor Rikki Kersten of the Department of Political and Social Change co-hosted the event and the Australian Minister of Defence delivered a keynote speech at the workshop dinner highlighting key dimensions of this country's forthcoming Defence White Paper. Additional Japanese assessments were conveyed to the workshop participants via the Hedley Bull Centre's state-of-the-art teleconference facilities linking up with the University of Tokyo which, along with the ANU, is this project's other principal investigator institution. A second workshop for this project will convene in Tokyo during late September 2009 and several major policy papers and journal articles will flow from the project findings.

New publications by John Ravenhill

John Ravenhill has recently published two articles, one co-authored with Yang Jiang, a Department PhD who is now teaching at Copenhagen Business School:

• 'The New East Asian Regionalism: Much Ado About Nothing?' Review of International Studies 35, S1 (February 2009): pp. 215-35.
• 'China's Move to Preferential Trading: A New Direction in China's Diplomacy', Journal of Contemporary China 18, 58 (January 2009): pp. 27-46 [co-author Yang Jiang].

Recently Awarded PhD Appointed as RCUK Research Fellow

Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: Divided Territories in the San Francisco System

Kimi Hara, ex-IR PhD student, recently appeared in the Asia-Pacific e-journal Japan Focus, and can be found at http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2493.

This article, along with her new book, Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: Divided Territories in the San Francisco System are considered to constitute an important development of the Empire of Bases thesis.

Sino-Australian Security Relations: Regional Cooperation in an Interdependent World

This workshop was held at University House, The Australian National University, 25-26 October 2007

This conference was a key component of a joint research project between The Australian National University and The China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing, funded by The Ford Foundation. It sought to further develop discussions and insights gained from the first conference in Beijing in April 2007, bringing together Chinese, Australian and regional perspectives on traditional and non-traditional forms of security in the context of the Sino-Australian relationship. Papers for discussion will culminate in the publication of an edited volume. Participants will also provide policy suggestions for enhancing the Sino-Australian bilateral security relationship.

Key contributors to this project from the Department of International Relations included Dr Katherine Morton, Professor Stuart Harris and Professor William Tow.

Joint ANU-Griffith consortium wins Centre for Excellence for Policing and Security

Professor William Tow and colleagues in REGNET at the ANU have joined forces with scholars at Griffith University to win a major five year grant to establish a Centre for Excellence for Policing and Security.

'New Frontiers' weekend workshop for pre-doctoral scholars - July 2007

A workshop for pre-doctoral scholars was run by the IR Department in July 2007. It was designed to inspire and stimulate future scholars in the discipline. If you are interested in gaining more information about the program see PhD Program in International Relations

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser delivers 2007 Commonwealth Lecture

On 30 April the Department's Graduate Studies in International Affairs Program hosted the 2007 Commonwealth Lecture. Delivered before a crowd of 500 staff, students, and journalists, former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser delivered a passionate speech titled 'Australians: What are we? How do we see ourselves? How do others see us?'.

Sarah Graham wins major American journal article prize

Sarah Graham, one of the Department's senior PHD students, has been awarded the 2007 Stuart Bernath Scholarly Article Prize by the American Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. The prize of $1,000 is awarded annually to the author of a distinguished article appearing in a scholarly journal or edited book, on any topic in United States foreign relations. The author must be under forty-one years of age or within ten years of receiving the Ph.D. at the time of the article's acceptance for publication. The article must be among the first six publications by the author. Sarah won the prize for her recent article in Diplomatic History.

Exchange Fellowship

Lorraine Elliott has been awarded an exchange fellowship funded jointly by the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. She will take up her fellowship in May 2007 as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Environmental Studies, Free University of Amsterdam where she will continue her research on global environmental governance and on transnational environmental crime.

Morton, Harris and Tow win Ford Foundation Research Grant

Kathy Morton, Stuart Harris and Bill Tow recently won a Ford Foundation grant for a collaborative research project on 'Sino-Australian Security Relations: Regional Cooperation in an Interdependent World'. This joint research project between the Australian National University and the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing aims to investigate the utility of cultivating a Sino-Australia strategic dialogue. The overall objective is to provide a set of agreed policy recommendations for expanding Sino-Australian security cooperation in both traditional and non-traditional arenas and for responding to wider regional security opportunities that might flow from such bilateral cooperation. The research agenda brings together Chinese, Australian, and regional perspectives.

Chris Reus-Smit delivered the 2006 'Last Lecture' in Great Hall

The ANU student community elected Professor Chris Reus-Smit to deliver the 2006 'Last Lecture' in the Great Hall of University House on Thursday 26 October. The 'Last Lecture' honours the students' choice of best lecturer. Over thirty academic staff were nominated this year, and the winner chosen in a campus wide ballot.

International Centre for Excellence in Asia Pacific Studies Grant

Lorraine Elliott has been awarded a small grant ($15,000) by the International Centre for Excellence in Asia Pacific Studies for a workshop on transnational environmental crime in the Asia-Pacific. This workshop will bring scholars and policy practitioners from Australia and the region to explore the drivers of transboundary environmental crime and the extent of regional capacity to respond to such activity, and to enhance understanding of how policy-makers can respond to these as practical and operational issues.

Newly minted PHD appointed to prestigious Fellowship in UK

Joel Quirk, one of the Department's newly completed PHDs, has been appointed to a Research Council of the United Kingdom Academic Fellowship in the Department of Law at the University of Hull, based in the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation. Joel's dissertation on the anti-slavery project was recently examined by Professors Richard Falk and Andrew Linklater, both of whom wrote enthusiastically about the work.

Cambridge Studies in International Relations

Chris Reus-Smit, along with Nicholas Wheeler from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, has taken over as series editor of the Cambridge Studies in International Relations. More on this in On Campus.

Workshop on East Asia Ten Years After the Financial Crises

On July 21-22, 2006, Andrew MacIntyre (Director, Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU) and John Ravenhill convened a workshop on East Asia Ten Years After the Financial Crises. This was the first part of a collaborative project organized jointly with T.J. Pempel, Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Besides MacIntyre, Pempel, and Ravenhill, papers were presented by Jennifer Amyx (University of Pennsylvania), Benjamin J. Cohen (University of California, Santa Barbara); Peter Gourevitch (University of California, San Diego), Stephan Haggard (University of California, San Diego), Natasha Hamilton (National University of Singapore), Allan Hicken (University of Michigan), Jongryn Mo (Yonsei University), Tom Pepinsky (Yale University), and Ben Reilly (Director of the Centre for Democratic Institutions, ANU). The second workshop for the project will be held at Berkeley in November, with the expectation that a book with the papers from the project will be published in late 2007.

ARC Grants

Congratulations to John Ravenhill and to Bill Tow who were both awarded grants in the 2005 ARC Discovery competition. John Ravenhill received an award of $250,000 over three years for a project on 'Responding to Globalization: Firms, the State and Upgrading in the Automotive Industry on the Western Pacific Rim'. Bill Tow, in conjunction with Michael Wesley and Brendan O'Connor, was awarded $234,000 for a three-year project on 'The Politics of Alliance Affinity'.