LUCIR NEWSLETTER -- February 20222
by Leiden University - Center for International Relations
LUCIR NEWSLETTER
FEBRUARY 2022
Dear LUCIR community,
As we get on with yet another busy, hybrid-teaching semester, we hope that you have had some time off to spend with your families and loved ones. Although it may have been impossible for many of you. The holidays coincided with covid-restrictions and a steep rise in infections which has meant further strain on colleagues, especially on those with care responsibilities. A shout out to all of you!
At LUCIR, we are looking forward to organizing more events in the coming year and, hopefully, at some point in the semester having an opportunity to meet in person. In December last year, we had planned drinks which were cancelled amidst the omicron-surge. They are back on our agenda for later this semester. We’ll keep you posted. But before that join us at any of the following events:
Book Club
New semester means a new book club reading roster! The schedule this semester is as follows:
Feb 25: Enzro Travesro, Leftwing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory, Columbia University Press.
Mar 25: Eric Helleiner, The Neomercantilists: A Global Intellectual History, Cornell University Press – in collaboration with Leiden Political Economy Group
Apr 29: Howard French, Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War, WW Norton.
May 27: Glenda Sluga, The Invention of International Order, Princeton University Press
Jun 24: Nivi Manchanda, Imagining Afghanistan: The History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge, Cambridge University Press.
Book club meetings are held on the last Friday of every month at 5pm. You can use this zoom<https://universiteitleiden.zoom.us/meeting/u5wpfuCvpzstGNy3zKTjMV7Bl9gmkl...> link to join our book club meetings.
Forthcoming Events in February
We have two upcoming events this month.
On 14 February, we are hosting a roundtable on the ongoing Russia-Ukraine situation. This LUCIR roundtable will take at Leiden University College Auditorium (Anna van Buerenplein 301, 2595 DG Den Haag) from 5-7 pm. The speakers include, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (FGGA/LUC), Maxine David (History) and Yaroslava Marusyk (University of Groningen), and Dmitry Danilov (MGIMO- tbc). Beatrix Futak-Campbell (FGGA/LUC) will moderate the event. Please register for the event here<https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/2022/02/roundtable-russia-ukr...>.
On 24 February, we are delighted to virtually launch Salvador Santino Regilme’s new book Aid Imperium: United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia (University of Michigan Press). In addition to the author, speakers include Michael Barnett (George Washington University), Hitomi Koyama (Ritsumeikan University), Karen Smith (Leiden University), Samuel Moyn (Yale University) and Dan Slater (University of Michigan). More details, including zoom link as well as a 30% discount code, can be found here<https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/2022/02/book-launch-aid-imperium>. The event, held in collaboration with the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies (WCED), will take place between 4-5:30 pm.
In the Media
Niels Van Willigen published a blog titled ‘Back again: The Netherlands’s ambitious new government’<https://ecfr.eu/article/back-again-the-netherlands-ambitious-new-government/>. Written for the European Council on Foreign Relations, Niels describes and analyzes the potential implications of the new Dutch coalition agreement for the Netherlands’s engagement with the European Union.
Tom Buitelaar recently published a research paper and blog on the theme of international criminal justice. Authored for the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, the paper titled ‘UN –ICC Cooperation: Walking a Tightrope’<https://www.nupi.no/nupi_eng/Publications/CRIStin-Pub/UN-ICC-Cooperation-...> discusses the benefits and costs of UN-ICC cooperation. In his blog<https://nvvn.nl/promoting-accountability-for-war-crimes-should-un-peaceke...>, written for Nederlandse Vereniging voor de Verenigde Naties (NVVN), Tom returns to analyze the challenges to the involvement of UN peace operations in international criminal justice. He argues that the UN should craft a balanced response to these challenges after carefully assessing its role.
For Africa is a Country, Corinna Jentzsch wrote an explainer titled ‘Ignorance, denial and insurgency in Mozambique<https://africasacountry.com/2021/12/ignorance-denial-and-insurgency-in-mo...>’ on the armed conflict in northern Mozambique. The conflict has been ongoing for four years and claimed 3500 lives and nearly 745,000 people have been displaced.
Publications
Corinna Jentzch’s new monograph titled Violent Resistance<https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/violent-resistance/9F6785EA6663B77BA...> (Cambridge University Press) came out recently. In the book, Corinna investigates the causes of the formation of militias and their ability to affect the dynamics of civil wars alongside governments and rebels. She identifies local military stalemates, relatively unified elites, and conducive preexisting social conventions as crucial factors influencing the creation and popular appeal of militias.
Felipe Colla De Amorim co-authored a book chapter with Rodolfo Machado and Vitor Sion in Economic Justice and the Limits of Transitional Justice<https://global.oup.com/academic/product/economic-actors-and-the-limits-of...>. Titled “Accountability for Volkswagen Role in the Brazilian Dictatorship’, the chapter underscores the challenges of securing transitional justice and corporate accountability by charting the evolution of long-running struggle to hold Volkswagen accountable for its complicity in various crimes against workers during the Brazilian dictatorship (1964-1985).
In “United States Foreign Aid and Multilateralism under the Trump Presidency”<https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ngs-2021-0030/html>, published in New Global Studies, Salvador Santino Regilme examines how US foreign strategic assistance programs under the Trump administration fared amid the surge in Chinese aid initiatives. He argues that Trump’s disdain for multilateralism diluted the efficacy of US aid projects and hence conceded more space to China in the Global South to the detriment of US and Western interests.
Brian Shaev was on a roll! He published three articles on the role of municipalities in dealing with migration in post-war Europe.
Published in Journal of Migration History, the article titled “A ‘Melting Pot’ City: Migration and Municipality in the Reconstruction of Dortmund”<https://brill.com/view/journals/jmh/7/3/article-p272_272.xml?ebody=abstra...> explores how the municipality of Dortmund promoted the concept of city-citizenship and facilitates healthy interactions and relations between native civil society and refugees, expellees, and migrants in the 1940s-1950s.
Co-authored with Sarah Hackett, his second article titled “Cities, Migration and the Historiography of Post –war Europe”<https://brill.com/view/journals/jmh/7/3/article-p191_191.xml?ebody=abstra...> , published in Journal of Migration History, makes the case for using local migration lens to gain useful insights for the historiography of post-war Europe.
For Urban History, the third article, co-authored with Sarah Hackett, Pal Brunnstrom, and Robert Nilsson Mohammadi, titled “Refugees, expellees and immigrants: comparing migrant reception policies and practices in post-war Bristol, Dortmund, and Malmo”<https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/urban-history/article/refugees-ex...>, highlights the diverse ways in which European cities governed migration.
Kevin Koehler and Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl published an article about governments’ responses to COVID-19, “Governing the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Middle East and North Africa: Containment Measures as a Public Good<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org...>,” in Middle East Law and Governance. The article uses new data on strict lockdowns and mosque closures in the region, which they collected with the help of a graduate of Leiden’s IRO program. The analysis shows that the larger the size of the winning coalition behind a government, something that can be measured for autocracies and democracies, the faster that government was to implement public health measures that saved lives.
Kai Hebel and Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl were interviewed by NRC’s Sjoerd de Jong for an article that ran in the weekend edition of the newspaper (29 January) about using game theory to understand the Ukraine crisis, “Stekelvarkens, kippen en giftige garnalen: de wetenschap van een conflict<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nrc...>” (Porcupines, Chickens, and Poisonous Shrimp: The Science of a Conflict). [alternate link here<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nrc...>]
Announcement
We want to promote the diversity of projects and publications that are linked to our research themes on our website. Please inform Ruben Verheul about new grants, projects, books, or special media appearances (including blog posts or opinion pieces), and he will create a news item for the website: Verheul, R. (Ruben) r.verheul(a)fsw.leidenuniv.nl<mailto:r.verheul@fsw.leidenuniv.nl>
Thank you!
Your LUCIR team
Beatrix Campbell, Corinna Jentzsch, Ghulam Ali Murtaza & Vineet Thakur
LUCIR | Leiden University Centre for International Relations | https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/lucir | Follow us on Twitter @LUCIRLeiden<https://twitter.com/lucirleiden> | Follow us on Instagram @lucir.leiden<https://www.instagram.com/lucir.leiden/>
