New publication in the GLD Policy Brief series

How can we restore focus on the political relevance of civic engagement? The Policy Brief “Trespassing ‘Civic’ Spaces: Insights from the Political Resonance of Citizenship Performances in Local Morocco” (authored by Francesco Colin) argues that examining how citizens perform rights claims helps us understand the political struggles behind state-society relations. It articulates key recommendations to policymakers and development professionals to take the politics of local performance seriously.

New webpage for SovereignPerfomance events

As the project grows, the SovereignPerformance project is launching our dedicated Events page on this website. It will be the place to discover upcoming conferences, workshops, and other activities related to the project. Stay connected with our team’s activities and join us in exploring the performative repertoires of sovereign aspiring entities.

New publication in the European Journal of International Relations

“Bootstrapping sovereignty: the placeholder dynamics of contested states from identity documents to international courts” (authored by Janis Grzybowski and Bart Klem) looks at how actors other than governments and international organizations, including ordinary people, field offices of UN agencies, and international courts, come to indirectly validate assumptions of sovereignty. Speaking to the core of this project, this article argues that claims to state sovereignty have performative effects when picked up in circulating attributions, including unwitting ones. These placeholder dynamics help explain how attributions of sovereignty simultaneously challenge, mimic, and rearticulate the statist international (dis)order.

Reading Sovereignty: New Seminar Series

The SovereignPerformance project will organise a series of reading seminars to critically examine sovereignty and related issues from a broad array of theoretical and empirical perspectives.

Hosted by Ghent University, these seminars will be an opportunity for researchers and scholars across social science disciplines to engage with the literature on and around sovereignty, challenging its assumptions and fostering a discussion that uncovers new perspectives to study sovereign aspirations and their performance.

On top of laying the groundwork to develop a network of academics that are committed to the questions raised by the project, these seminars will also foster the consolidation of a robust research agenda that seeks to improve our understanding of sovereign aspiring entities.

Two new post-doc researchers starting their work

We are welcoming Demet Arpacik and Francesco Colin, who will both start their work as post-doctoral researchers in the project. Both academics come with a wealth of experience. Demet will lead the ethnographic work on the Kurdish case. Francesco will lead the ethnographic work on the Catalan case.

SovereignPerformance hosts the Sri Lanka Roundtable

We are pleased to announce that the next Sri Lanka Roundtable will be held at Ghent University on 5-7 May. This academic event will bring together over 50 researchers working on Sri Lanka to present their work and debate current affairs in the country. As a vibrant intellectual community, the roundtable offers vital inputs for the Sri Lanka case study of SovereignPerformance.

ECPR workshop on self-determination

SovereignPerformance is co-organizing a workshop of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) in Innsbruck on 7-10 April. The workshop is co-convened by Marc Sanjaume-Calvet and Bart Klem. It is titled “Self-determination and democratic backsliding: New directions in the study of secession and minority rights”, and it brings together thirteen specialists form across political science, international relations, anthropology and geography.

EWIS workshop on secession and autonomy

SovereignPerformance is co-organising a workshop of the European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS) in Izmir on 1-3 July. The workshop is co-convened by Marc Sanjaume-Calvet and Bart Klem. It is titled “Self-Determination in an Era of Democratic Shifts: New Directions in the Study of Secession, Autonomy and Minority Protection”. Details will soon be announced.

New article in Citizenship Studies

“Contested citizenship in the liminal spaces of a divided Cyprus” (authored by Nasia Hadjigeorgiou and Bart Klem) combines the critical citizenship literature with political geography. It studies three supposedly “out of place” communities on the divided island Cyprus, to conceptualize the interplay between law, political conflict dynamics, and people’s everyday practices.

New article in Political and Legal Anthropology Review 

“Legalizing Oneself”: Citizenship,Waiting, and Fake Fakeness in Northern Cyprus (authored by Bart Klem) reflects on citizenship constellations in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). The article presents four life histories to map out how the unrecognised status of the TRNC affects different kinds of citizens differently. Conceptually, it combines three theoretical strands: the idea of “citizenship as claim”, reflections on the subjectivity of waiting, and the notion of faking fakeness.