Dr David Bates was in Manchester last month for the Political Studies Marxism Specialist Group, where he co-organised three sessions on Professor Norman Geras’ contribution to Marxism. He also presented a paper on Geras’ contribution to the idea of self-emancipation in Marxism.

Dr Sarah Lieberman was also busy, attending the 1^st European Conference on Teaching and Learning Politics, International Relations and European Studies, in Maastricht, and giving a paper at the UACES Conference in Cork on the regulation of food by the EU and supermarkets. In addition to Sarah, Dr Andre Barrinha (European cybersecurity), Dr Soeren Keil (Politics in the Balkans) and our new Jean Monnet Professor, Dr Amelia Hadfield (European foreign policy and EU education policy) all presented papers at this conference.

For Amelia, this was a particularly eventful summer. In July she gave a Keynote speaker at the Chancellor’s Colloquium, celebrating the 225^th Anniversary of her alma mater, University of King’s College, Canada’s oldest seat of learning.

As well as doing some consultancy on energy security for various European think tanks, most of her summer was taken up with REIF-funded research on the wide-ranging topic of sovereignty, carving out the Energy & Governance group, and putting together the various Jean Monnet Chair activities, commencing in and throughout autumn 2014.

Andre was involved in two other research events during the summer. He set up, together with Helena Carrapico from Aston University, a workshop in Lisbon on European Cybersecurity, sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and he presented a paper on neoliberalism and cyberterrorism at the BISA Critical Studies on Terrorism Conference in Nottingham.

During this period he was also involved in the publication of a Research Paper for the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre on Emerging Powers, and of a book chapter (“Dealing with Risk: Precision Strikes and Interventionism in the Obama Administration”) for the edited volume Precision Strike Warfare and International Intervention, published by Routledge.

In addition to the UACES conference, Soeren participated in the IPSA World Congress, presenting a paper on Citizenship education in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as part of a panel on Citizenship education in new and old federations he organised together with Prof Guy Laforest (Université Laval).

Finally, Dr Mark Bennister and Dr Laura Cashman were active in the ECPR general conference that took place in Glasgow in early September. Mark presented a co-authored paper on prime ministerial accountability to parliament and Laura presented a paper co-authored with Dr John FitzGibbon on populism and anti-romani sentiment in Europe. A revised version of this paper was also presented at the British Psychological Society – Social Psychology Section annual conference on 11 September here at Canterbury Christ Church University.