Research and public engagement are at the heart of POLIS’s work. The department carries out and publishes research on a wide range of pressing political topics in areas such as British and European politics, political theory, and international politics. This work sustains a lively research culture and embraces the importance of communicating research in an accessible way – not least through the Open Politics series of podcasts. Key areas of current work include the following.

Researchers

Geoff Andrews continues his research on the Slow Food movement and on Italian politics, following the publication of his book The Slow Food Story in 2008. Georgina Blakeley's research is focused on different aspects of Spanish politics. She is currently researching historical memory in Spain through an analysis of the Law of Historical Memory (2007). She is also continuing to work on aspects of citizen participation and urban governance both in Spain and the UK and is currently co-authoring a book on urban regeneration in East Manchester. Simon Bromley, currently Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, co-authored with Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson the third edition of the influential book Globalization in Question, published by Polity Press in 2009. William Brown is pursuing his research on North–South relations, donor aid policies and Africa's international relations. Richard Heffernan is researching and preparing a book on the British Prime Minister. He has recently concentrated on political parties, the Europeanization of British politics and the politics of New Labour. Jef Huysmans researches contemporary politics of insecurity and in particular the enactment of conceptions of the political in security practice. He is currently working on a book Security: International Society, Democracy and Insecurity, an edited volume Security and Citizenship: The Constitution of Political Being, and an ESRC funded International Collaboratory on Critical Methods in Security Studies (with Claudia Aradau). Engin Isin, director of the OECUMENE project (see below), is undertaking cross-cultural and historical investigations of citizenship as political subjectivity and the conditions under which subjects constitute themselves as claimants of justice. Bob Kelly is researching developments in West African Politics, with a particular interest in Ghana. Raia Prokhovnik is following up her books on sovereignty with an article on sovereignty in Australia. She is also developing research towards a reconceptualisation of bodies in politics, and pursuing further work on international political theory 'after Hobbes'. Following the publication of his latest book The Representative Claim in 2010 and the completion of the current phase of work on European citizenship through the ENACT programme, Michael Saward is extending his work on performance and ‘performativity’ in representative politics. He is also developing a strand of work on ‘slow theory’ and ‘slow politics’, which consider responses to the increasing time-based pressures on politicians and officials. Mark J Smith contributes to academic and policy debates on ethics, knowledge and research questions associated with environmental responsibility, labour standards and human rights as well as environmental management and the Big Society. Vicki Squire examines contemporary practices of governing mobility as well as political struggles that emerge in relation to such practices. In addition to writing various articles and book chapters, she is author of The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum, editor of The Contested Politics of Mobility: Borderzones and Irregularity and Assistant Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies.

For books, articles and chapters published by POLIS staff, see Open Research Online.

Research Centres

Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG)

A good deal of POLIS research is conducted in and through the interdisciplinary social science Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG), Jef Huysmans is director of the Centre, succeeding Engin Isin. Raia Prokhovnik is convenor of CCIG’s Bodies research programme, and Claudia Aradau is convenor of its Security research programme. Vicki Squire is RCUK Research Fellow at CCIG and leads the ‘Borders, mobility and citizenship’ thematic strand of the Security research programme. Other POLIS researchers are also active contributors to the work of CCIG.

For further details on CCIG's profile and activities please visit the Centre's website.

Major Research Grants

OECUMENE

Engin Isin is principal investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) funded project ‘Citizenship After Orientalism’ (2010-2014). The project revisits questions of citizenship as political subjectivity in orientalized and colonized cultures through genealogical investigations. The aim is not only to uncover citizenship practices that remained either invisible or inaudible in these cultures but also to explore the possibilities of a renewed and expanded understanding of European citizenship.

In the Oecumene project, four research fellows explore, in different ways, the relation between citizenship and political subjectivity. Deena Dajani is examining how Arabic dramatic traditions, including stories told by nomadic travellers (called hakawatis) and shadow-theatre, can contribute to understanding how political subjectivities are produced and articulated in different mediums and places. Aya Ikegame is exploring the political and social roles of Hindu religious institutions called mathas and the heads of mathas (gurus) in South India. Alessandra Marino is looking at creative writing as a political act, focusing on forms of collective agency and movements in India led by women who are also creative writers. Leticia Sabsay is investigating how sexual progressive politics have entered into the contemporary re-articulation of colonial and orientalist ideas about citizenship and democracy.

For more details see the Oecumene website.

ENACT

Engin Isin was principal investigator of the European commission funded (Framework Programme 7) research programme on 'Enacting European Citizenship' (2008-2010). Under this programme, the OU led a consortium consisting of university researchers in Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, Latvia and Turkey. Claudia Aradau and Jef Huysmans co-led a project on 'Enacting Mobility', and Michael Saward led ENACT work on intellectual distillation and dissemination, including a briefing session for EU officials in Brussels in 2010. Vicki Squire was a core investigator on this project. Currently, a book is being co-edited by Isin and Saward based on this project.

For more details see the ENACT website

International Collaboratory on Critical Methods in Security Studies (ICCM)

Claudia Aradau and Jef Huysmans lead the ESRC funded International Collaboratory on Critical Methods in Security Studies (2009-2011). Under this project the OU, in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh and the University of Sussex, runs an international network of doctoral students and early career researchers initiating methodological research agendas in critical security studies.

For more detail see the ICCM website

Claudia Aradau is also associate researcher in the FP6 project The Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security and on the management committee of COST Action A24 'The Evolving Social Construction of Threats'. She will also participate in a research project on 'The Social Determination of Risk', funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

The 2008 Research Assessment Exercise

The majority of central academics in the department featured in the Open University's successful interdisciplinary social science submission to the Research Assessment Exercise 2008.

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