Call for papers: South Caucasus – Modernity and Transformation King’s College London October 9, 2014 Russia and Eurasia Security Research Group at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London will host a workshop aimed to highlight research of South Caucasus security and foreign policy. One of the most volatile and unpredictable regions of the former USSR, the South Caucasus is a field of multiple debates and political paradoxes. For the past twenty years or so, it has been riven by inter-state and intra-state wars, regime change, and economic and political problems. Research on the region acknowledges the heterodox and complex nature of the region, which raises particular challenges. This workshop aims to address the multiple dynamics and dilemmas that threaten to tear the region apart. The workshop invites PhD students and early-career researchers to submit presentations/papers on security and foreign policies of the three countries of the South Caucasus – Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia - as well as the three de-facto entities of South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia. We seek to evaluate changing dynamics in the areas of security, energy and regional cooperation, and the way in which these states and entities have succeeded/or failed to adapt and transform. Papers are expected to address: • The challenges to adaptability and how the local elites participate in the process; • Reasons for the success of governmental/regime tactics relative to longer-term institutional initiatives • Formation and implementation of foreign policy ideas; • The extent of isolation, its divisiveness, and the ways in which this hinders development and cooperation; • The possibility of economic interests and globalisation overcoming isolation and divisions; • Regional perceptions of statehood in the global order. Please submit 250-word abstract and your institutional affiliation to [email protected] by the 1st of July 2014.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 16:03:13 +0000