RGS-IBG 2022 Session Proposal: Learning the International
Students in a class at the Graduate Institute, Geneva during the 1980s (Source: IHEID)
Session Proposal for RGS-IBG: 30th August - 2nd September 2022
Learning the International: The Spaces and Politics of Statecraft
Convenors: Dr Ruth Craggs, Dr Fiona McConnell, Dr Jonathan Harris
Sponsored by Geography and Education Research Group and Political Geography Research Group
The proposed session aims to facilitate a productive encounter between critical political geographies and geographies of education. Recent trends in political geography towards the study of everyday human and non-human agency at various scales, often broadly influenced by ‘assemblage thinking’, have sharpened focus on the seemingly mundane connections and practices relegated to the background of geopolitical narratives of the state relating to international relations, institutional management and change, and the development of national cultures (Kuus, 2011; Jones, 2020). One such area of focus is on the production and transmission of knowledge, in and through spaces and practices of education and training. It has long been argued that modern education is a powerful tool of statecraft for the making of citizens (Taylor, 2009) and geopolitical subjects (Müller, 2011), but less well-explored is the role of education at the interface of states, for example in international scholarships, regional and sub-regional programmes of education and training, or the various ways at a more local level that education systems adapt to their geopolitical context. These spaces and practices of education and training shape social and professional norms, networks and exclusions, which in turn shape state-building and the international.
Key Themes:
· Geopolitics of training and expertise
· Political geographies of education
· International scholarships and exchanges
· Geopolitical atmospheres and materiality
· Pedagogies of diplomatic training
· Diplomacy and/or diplomats of new or emerging states
· Education and decolonisation
Along with conference organisers, we will remain flexible to accommodate a wide participation in this session, hoping for a strong in-person element, with hybrid and online access.
Please send abstracts of 300 words to jonathan.a.harris@kcl.ac.uk by 5pm on Friday 11th March. Successful abstract authors will need to complete the abstract submission and conference registration process with the RGS-IBG before 25th March 2022 (https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/call/).