Dpir Alumni Newswire

DECEMBER 2013 DPIR ALUMNI NEWSWIRE CONTENTS DPIR Welcomes You 3 People Dear Alumni Friends, New Staff Profiles: As I complete my tenure as Head of • Elizabeth Frazer Department after 3 years and a term in • Todd Hall office, perhaps you can indulge a bit of • Daniel Butt nostalgia for what we have achieved. • Jane Gingrich I started out as HoD with a number of Staff Farewell: objectives: priority number one was to • Mark Philp increase funding for our doctoral students; Alumni Profiles: then we had to manage generational renewal • Alec Kellaway of our faculty; we had to prepare our • Lyndsay Winpenny (Mountford) Research Excellence Framework (REF) in time • Knut Erik Solem for the deadline in November this year (if you aren’t sure what the REF is about, think • Isabel Summers public sector performance management on • Rebecca Anne Schneider steroids); and we had to develop our knowledge exchange programme. I was especially keen for the Department to reach out to alumni worldwide as part 13 Alumni Class Notes of our new alumni relations programme. All this was on top, of course, of the 17 Alumni Events usual business of ensuring teaching and supervision of our students, conducting our research, creating a happy and safe place for people to work and study, and 20 Alumni Publications generally keeping the lights on – or as we now say, the coffee machine in working 22 Student News order. I think we have been successful on all counts – including with the new coffee 26 Research machine, which in the 8 months of its operation has delivered more than 8,000 • Centres and Programmes cups. • Research Highlights • Knowledge Exchange Let’s start with funding for our doctoral students. As I think I have mentioned in a previous message, following a size and shape review of our academic staffing 31 Politics in Spires blog and some successful fund raising, we were able to increase the Department’s 32 DPIR Publicity own support to doctoral students - whom we now fully fund with fees and living expenses - from £225K per year to £675K. When our funds are added 33 Noticeboard to matching funds provided by many colleges, for which we are very grateful, continued overleaf DPIR ALUMNI NEWSWIRE, DECEMBER 2013 WELCOME 1 DPIR Welcomes You - continued we really did manage to take a great leap forward. Overall, in the last five years, the Department has funded 237 doctoral students over and above awards to another 40 from the ESRC, 25 from the AHRC, 30 from the Clarendon, and 36 from the Rhodes. DPIR is certainly the strongest environment in the UK and probably in Europe in support of the next generation of scholars and those in the policy and business world for whom high level research training is an asset. But, I will repeat again (and again) how important it is that we up our levels of support yet further in order to ensure that we can continue to recruit and train the best doctoral students. This remains our number one priority and one that we hope you, as alumni, will support. Our academic strategy is to be big enough to cover all aspects of the discipline of politics and international relations. To that end, we have made many new appointments as people have retired or, in a few cases, moved on to other universities – to our regret. All our appointments were made on the basis of strategic need in crucial new areas of research and teaching. Twenty new permanent staff were recruited in the last five years, 14 of them during my time as HoD. On top of that, the Department has employed 74 early career post-doctoral researchers. Successes in supporting graduate students and in strengthening our diverse and pluralistic research culture were at the core of our REF submission. 80 of our colleagues were ‘submitted’ in the Politics and International Relations Unit of Assessment and 8 in Area Studies. Overall, we submitted 283 pieces of work. In addition, our research was the basis for 11 impact case studies (9 in Politics and International Relations and 2 in Area Studies). I have always been of the view that DPIR is the best place in the UK (and maybe the world) to study our subject. I can hardly believe that the national REF panel will not agree. The result is expected late 2014. (And then we will see whether any government funding will be left to reward the winners.) We have moved to embed alumni relations and knowledge exchange at the heart of our activities, through this alumni newsletter and the annual alumni magazine Inspires, through the Department blog Politics in Spires, and through the two alumni weekends that were held in 2013, the first on Europe and the second on the engagement of political theory with political practice. Do look out for the next such weekend in May 2014. We hope you appreciate this outreach to you. We do it because we believe that our research has much to interest the world, starting of course with our own alumni, and also because we hope for your help in realising our future objectives. Finally, I must add a few personal words of gratitude. I am immensely grateful to all of the administrative staff in the Department for making my time as Head so enjoyable. The list of people to thank is too long to mention here. But I must single out Kate Candy, who runs our communications and alumni relations activities and has done the most wonderful and professional job for us. She has kept me to deadline for the most part, and delivered outstanding publications and outreach. The future for the Department looks good and I wish my successor Elizabeth Frazer all the best over her term. I am looking forward to getting back to my own research with full concentration. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and looking forward to seeing you in the Department soon! Stephen Whitefield DPIR ALUMNI NEWSWIRE, DECEMBER 2013 WELCOME 2 The Department would like to welcome the following new staff (for Michaelmas term 2013): Academic Staff: • Ben Ansell, University Lecturer in Comparative Research Staff: Democratisation with Nuffield (1 July 2013) • Daniel Butt, University Lecturer in Political Theory with • Ursula Hackett, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in US Balliol (1 Sept 2013) Politics (jointly with Rothermere American Institute) • JanaLee Cherneski, Department Lecturer in (1 October 2013) Political Theory in association with Oriel College • Sukriti Issar, Post-doctoral Research Fellow in (1 October 2013) Quantitative Political Science with a specialism in • David Doyle, University Lecturer in Latin Political Economy (1 August 2013) American Politics (jointly with SIAS)(1 Sept 2013) • Gideon Elford, Department Lecturer in Political Theory Administrative Staff: in association with New College (1 Sept 2013) • Jane Gingrich, University Lecturer in Comparative • Tara Bailey, MPhil/MSc Co-ordinator (20 May 2013) Political Economy with Magdalen (1 July 2013) • Hannah Bond, Undergraduate Studies Co-ordinator • Jody LaPorte, Department Lecturer in Comparative (5 August 2013) Government and Politics (including Russia and the • Katarina Buehling, Personnel Officer (1 Sept 2013) Former Soviet Union) in association with St Hilda’s • Aparajita Kashyap, MPhil/MSc Co-ordinator College (1 Sept 2013) (20 May 2013) • Andreas Murr Department Lecturer in Quantitative Methods in Political Science and IR (1 Sept 2013) • Scot Peterson, Bingham CDF in Constitutional Studies in association with Balliol (1 April 2013) We wish the following leavers well: Academic Staff: Administrative Staff: • Peter Bajomi-Lazar (30 Sept 2013) • Tim Barnett, Personnel Officer (July 2013) • Mark Philp (30 Sept 2013) • Lucy Crittenden, ELAC Administrator (Sept 2013) • Rebecca Reilly-Cooper (31 August 2013) • Aparajita Kashyap, MPhil/MSc Co-ordinator • Vaclaw Stetka (30 Sept 2013) (21 October 2013) • Michal Wenzel (30 Sept 2013) • Charles Harper, MDCEE Programme Administrator (30 November 2013) DPIR ALUMNI NEWSWIRE, DECEMBER 2013 PEOPLE 3 Elizabeth Frazer: Head of Department elect agree that the quantity of resources impact case studies for the REF in the and effort needed to produce these second half of 2013, so in the first half accounts undermines the very science of 2014 we hope to make up ground and scholarship - that is ‘research’ - with work on our internet pages and that is being measured. Perhaps such in the development of the public paradoxes and perversities are the very communication of our research results. stuff of politics - but still politics and The Department also conducted a international relations departments review of our graduate education, but nationally are reeling. I am very very the REF diverted the attention that we grateful that under the leadership of need to pay to implementation of the our outgoing Head of Department, recommendations of the review team. Stephen Whitefield, the University So there’s another priority. of Oxford DPIR has put together an excellent account of ourselves, and I count myself as very fortunate now all there is to do is wait for the to take up the post of Head of verdict. Department at a time when this level I was delighted to meet so many of of investment in review and revision of you at our recent ‘Engagement of Well, it’s not quite all there is to do. our activities has already been made. Theory’ alumni event and thoroughly The fact that the REF has been so We are a department of extraordinarily enjoyed the opportunity to join in resource- intensive means that our wide and also deep intellectual range, discussions with you on some of our administrative staff now has a backlog consisting of a number of overlapping more topical research in political of information analysis and systems and interlocking networks of scholars theory. I hope we will have many more development work that has been on and teachers in the fields of history, such occasions to welcome you into hold for the last eighteen months.

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