Thank-Offering to Britain Fellowships: past awards
Professor Phillip Cole SRF19\190047
University of the West of England, Bristol, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Department of Health and Social Sciences Value
Global Displacement in the 21st Century: Towards an Ethical Framework
Awarded: £25,821.00
This project is about forced displacement, and so it covers the ‘traditional’ topic of the refugee, but it also covers those displaced persons who do not fit into the definition of the refugee, and so are rarely discussed within global ethics or political theory. The internally displaced, the stateless, the climate displaced, and the economically displaced, all face challenges, and many have what are called ‘refugee-type’ experiences, but they have few if any legal protections. The aim is to arrive at an ethical framework for understanding these forms of displacement and what makes an ethical response to them. And so the project brings these displaced people within the scope of moral and political theory for the first time, and it does so within the context of a distinctive approach to global political theory, Radical Realism, and so engages in the latest developments in this field to address these urgent questions.
Professor Sue Vice SRF\170127
Professor of English Literature, University of Sheffield, School of English Culture, Media and Performance – Film and Media Studies
Beyond Shoah: Claude Lanzmann's Outtakes and the Visual Archive
Awarded: £54084
This project will provide an account and analysis of the 250 hours of interview footage cut from Claude Lanzmann’s Holocaust documentary film Shoah (1985). This analysis will address three areas. First, it will bring into public view and explore in filmic terms the excluded footage, which includes topics not featured in Shoah, such as rescue, resistance and the Allied response to the news of genocide, as well as interviews with Holocaust survivors, perpetrators and bystanders. Second, it will give possible reasons for these exclusions, and reveal how Shoah took shape by this means. Third, it will propose new ways to approach the notion of a visual archive of footage excluded from a documentary film.
Dr Jean-Marc Dreyfus SF150085
Reader in History, The University of Manchester, School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, History Division, History Division
History / Social History
Disclosing post-Holocaust and deportation exhumations: the example of the French national search mission for corpses, 1945-1958
Awarded: £45,760
This project will study the mass exhumations of deportees’ corpses after WWII and the Holocaust. They were conducted from 1945 to 1960. The project aims at defining a genealogy of the today’s treatment of corpses as exhumations are currently beeing conducted in countries where genocides and mass violences occured in the 20st Century: Rwanda, Spain, Bosnia, Cambodia, Vietnam… The research will focus on the French state searching in Germany the corpses of deportees from France: it was the most active enterprise, exhuming and conducting forensic examination of over 50 000 cadavers, both of Resistance fighters and of Jewish victims. 8000 of them were identified. Italian, British and Belgian similar search missions will be considered in a comparative approach. The study of the reappropriation of corpses by different agents, administrations and families will renew the historiography and representations of deportation and the Shoah in the post-war years. In a diversified theoretical framework, this history research will integrate forensic studies, anthropology of death and law.
Professor Roger Crisp SF140095
Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Oxford; Uehiro Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, St Anne's College, Oxford; Philosophy
Philosophy / Ethics including applied ethics
Taming the Beast
Awarded: £49,455.56
Egoism states that anyone has strongest reason to do what will make their own life as good as possible. This view, standard in the ancient world, was powerfully defended in the seventeenth century by Thomas Hobbes – the “Beast of Malmesbury”. British moral philosophers after Hobbes offered several powerful and suggestive responses to him, the most extreme claiming that one should be entirely impartial. This book will examine these responses critically, elucidating and examining the view still held by many that we have a special reason to be concerned about our own good.
Stevenson, Dr Nick SF130020
Reader in Cultural Sociology, University of Nottingham, Sociology and Social Policy
Sociology / Social Theory
Human Rights, Civil Society and the Reinvention of Freedom
Awarded: £47,251
Ideas of human rights, civil society and freedom have a long and complex history in Western and European societies. It is the aim of this research to investigate what these ideas mean in a modern, interconnected world. By investigating a range of artistic, cultural and political movements and associations the research will consider the extent to which the meaning of human rights and freedom are changing after the European revolutions of 1989. If, since the end of the Cold War, the human rights agenda has become more popular globally, then other, more pessimistic voices have argued that freedom is being progressively abandoned as a virtue. Many critics claim that the development of a statist agenda after 9/11 along with mass consumerism has meant that more authentic ideas of freedom have either been jettisoned through talk of security or converted into ideas that are more compatible with market choice. Dr Stevenson will explore the changing collective meanings of freedom across a range of political and cultural sites in our increasingly uncertain and fragile times.
Professor Mark Swenarton SF120008
James Stirling Professor of Architecture, University of Liverpool
History of Art / History of architecture
The housing programme of the London Borough of Camden under Sydney Cook 1965-73
£38365.20
Rogan, Dr Eugene SF100064
University Lecturer in the Modern History of the Middle East, University of Oxford, Faculty of Oriental Studies
History / Modern History
The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920
£37921
Dr Alexander Lingas
Senior Lecturer in Music, City University
A New Historical Introduction to Byzantine Chant
Professor Patricia Clavin
Fellow and Tutor in History, Jesus College, Oxford
Bread and Butter Internationalism and the League of Nations, 1919-1945
Professor Richard Collier
Professor of Law, Newcastle (S1)
The Fathers' Rights Movement and Law Reform
This project involves an interdisciplinary and theoretically informed engagement with the way that the contemporary fathers' rights movement has sought to engage with law reform processes. The aim is to bring to recent high-profile debates in this area in the UK a better understanding of the complexities of law and legal regulation, one informed by recent developments in doctrinal, theoretical and empirical legal scholarship as well as in social theory, gender studies and, in particular, the critical study of men and masculinities. In so doing it will enhance knowledge of the relationship between law and parenthood and produce clear and identifiable benefits for a range of Research Users including policy makers, professional bodies, pressure groups, government and the academy. The project embraces historical, theoretical and empirical elements, including interviews with activists, lawyers and relevant policy-makers. It also integrates a strong comparative element.
Professor of Economic History Oxford (S2)
Invention and Technology in the British Industrial Revolution
The prosperity of the developed countries is based on high productivity technology. The British industrial revolution marks a decisive step forward in inventing and applying such technology. The reasons for that breakthrough remain elusive, however. Was it due to liberal political institutions, the fruits of empire, the scientific revolution? This project addresses that question and focusses on the role of economic incentives in inducing and sustaining invention. Global comparisons show that British wages were remarkably high at the exchange rate and high relative to the prices of consumer goods, capital inputs, and energy. These patterns were due to success in the global economy, which created tight labour markets and led to the exploitation of Britain's coal resources. In turn, the wage and price patterns generated a demand for technology that substituted capital and energy for labour. The high standard of living also made possible the skill acquisition and savings that responded to the challenge. Finally, the wage and price structure led to an institutional innovation—R&D—that transformed invention and permanently raised the rate of economic growth. The Scientific Revolution made only a limited contribution to the new technology, whose origins were primarily economic. The aim of this project is to develop these ideas, so that we may understand the origins of mass prosperity.
Dr Matt Matravers
Senior Lecturer in Political Philosophy, Department of Politics, University of York
Dangerous Severe Personality Disorder, Responsibility and the State
In two important recent documents the Government has outlined a new policy in the established area of ‘dangerousness’. The key notion in these documents is Dangerous Severe Personality Disorder; a condition that the Government admits is ill-defined. In this research, Dr Matravers examines our accounts of responsibility through the prism of ‘personality disorder’, both to identify a relevant notion of personality disorder and to determine what may justly be done to those who fall under this description. This requires bringing together two literatures that have hitherto remained largely separate. First, from moral philosophy, where the primary focus has been on conceptions of responsibility and the challenge posed to these conceptions by those whose ability to appreciate moral reasons is impaired. Second, from legal and political philosophy, where interest has centred on the high levels of false positives in the existing mechanisms for identifying those who are dangerous and on the tension between the need to respect individual rights and the need for social protection. The task is to bring into constructive engagement our accounts of responsibility and the legal and political concerns of managing dangerousness.
Dr Theadora Kostakopoulou
Senior Lecturer in Law, Manchester School of Law, University of Manchester
The Future Governance of Citizenship
Attention to citizenship has received a new impetus and reached an unprecedented scale in the last decade. Forces and developments above and below the state have called into question the traditional nation-state centred model of citizenship. This had led scholars to embark upon the search of new forms of citizenship, which would replace the old model of singular membership in the national community (Held 1996; Soysal 1994).
Three alternative conceptions of citizenship have been suggested by the literature: postnational citizenship, transnational citizenship and multicultural citizenship. Advocates of postnational citizenship argue that the nationality model of citizenship has been superseded by a new type of membership based on deterritorialised notions of persons’ rights. The codification and elaboration of human rights principles have led to the dilution of the ‘natural dichotomy’ between citizens and aliens (Soysal, 1994), thereby leading to the decline of national citizenship (Jacobson, 1996). Transnational citizenship refers to the fact that international migration and the ensuing interactions between receiving and sending countries result in the creation of mobile societies beyond the borders of territorial states without dissolving these borders (Baubock, 1994). Multicultural citizenship, on the other hand, entails the aspiration that sociopolitical institutions and structures become more attentive to, and reflective of, the claims made by minority constituencies for inclusion and cultural recognition (Parekh, 2000).
Although these conceptions of citizenship are insightful and important, they, nevertheless, fail to put forward a model of citizenship that is not wedded to the nation-state. Postnational citizenship does not challenge the primacy of the state; the state is the body that is rightfully and legitimately charged with upholding human rights both domestically and internationally. States also define the scope and nature of the rights granted to resident aliens and the international human rights guarantees. In this respect, one should not overstate the role of human rights principles in improving the incorporation of migrants and underestimate trends towards exclusionary nationalism and nativist reactions. Transnational citizenship denies neither the existence nor the relevance of borders and nation-states; it simply recognises the increasing possibility of membership in two states and multiple identities. Multicultural citizenship, on the other hand, aims at pluralising the nation and making ethnic migrant communities an integral part of a changing nation rather than going beyond it (Parekh, 2000). In sum, in all three accounts citizenship remains a national-statist affair, and no one has elaborated a systematic institutional framework of post-national citizenship.
This deficit has been pinpointed by Kenneth Karst (2000, pp. 599-600) who has recently argued that ‘if the proponents of postnational citizenship are to persuade U.S. citizens to go along with their project, they will have to offer an institutional framework that serves to protect the substantive values of citizenship.... In short, what the proponents of postnational citizenship need to offer is law’.
Believing that its enormous implications for justice and community make it more compelling than ever to engage with the search of an alternative model of citizenship, the proposed project will examine the future prospects of the existing nationality model of citizenship and will develop an alternative, de-nationalised model.
The proposed research will blend normative political theory with critical legal studies. It will build on and further extend into new directions reflective research that Dr Kostakopoulou has conducted in the areas of citizenship, membership and community.
Dr S C Greer
Reader in Law, University of Bristol
Interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights
The proposed study will examine the failure of the European Court of Human Rights, and the (recently abolished) European Commission on Human Rights, to resolve systematically several core issues raised by the European Convention on Human Rights: (a) the appropriate division of labour between the European Court of Human Rights and national parliaments, courts, executive and administrative institutions; (b) the relationship between Convention rights and each other; (c) the relationship between Convention rights and public interests; (d) when human rights standards should be harmonised in member states and national differences preserved. It will be argued that the current confusion can be traced to a single source - the haphazard way in which the Convention has been interpreted by the Strasbourg institutions. However, a more rigorous theory of interpretation, based on three constitutional principles - 'rights', 'democracy' and 'priority to rights' - is already inherent in the text and case law awaiting more deliberate articulation. If this model were applied more consistently it would enhance the credibility of some existing decisions, but undermine that of others. However, it would also offer a solution to the core uncertainties and would bring much greater coherence and authority to the Court's future decisions, particularly in the domestic law of member states.
Professor C Campbell
Professor of Law, University of Ulster
Emergency Powers and Politically Motivated Violence: The Lessons of Northern Ireland
As an example of the response of the liberal-democratic state to political violence and terrorism, the Northern Ireland precedent is critically important both domestically and internationally. Consequently it is vital that the lessons of the last thirty years are learned if the mistakes of the past are not to be repeated. While official discourses present the state's use of emergency legislation as a proportionate response to terrorism, a contrary thesis suggests that the rights-violations associated with the use of emergency powers may have helped to sustain violence rather than to eliminate it. Rejecting any simplistic cause-and-effect model, Professor Campbell's project explores this alternative thesis, by drawing together the emerging theoretical literature on the topic, and by applying the framework provided to the empirical data:
- a survey of the operation of jury-less Diplock courts;
- official data on the security situation and on the operation of Diplock courts.
The results, to be published in book form, will include suggestions calculated to ensure that any errors that may have occurred in the past will not be repeated in the future.
Dr A Hills
Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies, King’s College London
The Theory and Practice of Military Operations on Urban Terrain
The award of the Thank-Offering to Britain Fellowship to Dr Hills will enable her to research and write a scholarly monograph on the theory and practice of contemporary military urban operations. This project will lead to the first book length analysis of military urban operations incorporating research from consultancies, professional commentaries on tactics, and military histories. The book will provide a contribution to the wider study of urban operations, the changing nature of military force in an era of globalisation and expeditionary warfare, and the growth of new socio-economic inequalities and power conflicts. The project will refine the contextual model already developed by Dr Hills which advances an explanation of why urban operations form a microcosm of significant military, political and social trends, and which demonstrates that urban operations present a unique set of political and moral challenges to policy makers and commanders. The model synthesises concepts derived from military, security, urban and crisis studies, and identifies conceptual and policy issues relevant to British strategy.