The interdisciplinary Ghent Centre for Global Studies and the Conflict Research Group of the Department of Conflict and Development Studies at Ghent University have the honor of inviting you to their joint public lecture series on Global Interventions, in which leading international scholars will offer critical perspectives on global security and justice.
- Friday March 13: Professor Mary Kaldor (London School of Economics) on Global Security, Cosmopolitan Security
- Friday April 3: Professor Dorothea Hilhorst (Wageningen University) on Humanitarian Interventions
- Friday April 24: Professor David Chandler (University of Westminster) on Rethinking Global Interventions
All lectures take place at Ghent University. The lectures are in English.
Admission is free, but registration is required (via Event Manager, see below)
Coordination and contact: Julie.Carlier@ugent.be, crg@ugent.be
Global Security, Cosmopolitan Security – Friday March 13, 12.30-14.00:
Second Generation Human Security: Reflections on Globalisation and Intervention by Mary Kaldor (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)
Second-generation human security focuses on implementation, especially in difficult places. The lecture will briefly outline the evolution of human security and make the case for a form of intervention that is neither classic war-fighting (e.g. air strikes), nor top-down peace talks, but focuses on bottom-up approaches to dampening down violence and protecting people.
Mary Kaldor is Professor of Global Governance, Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit at the London School of Economics and CEO of the DFID funded Justice and Security Research Programme. She is the author of several books, including The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon: Human Security and the Changing Rules of war and Peace, New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era and Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. She was co-chair of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, a member of the International Independent Commission on Kosovo and convenor of the Human Security Study Group, which reported to Javier Solana.
Location: Facultaire Raadzaal, Emile Braunschool, Volderstraat 3, 9000 Gent
Admission is free, but registration is required via Event Manager: https://webapps.ugent.be/eventManager/events/PublicLectureKaldor
Humanitarian interventions – Friday April 3, 12.30-14.00:
Conjunctions of humanitarian aid and politics of justice and security by Dorothea Hilhorst (Wageningen University and Ghent University)
Humanitarian aid is set apart from other types of aid because it is designed to be principled and untainted by the politics of conflict. The reality is different and aid always has intended or unintended political effects. The lecture will discuss some current trends and place these in historical perspective.
Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at Wageningen University, and guest professor at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies of Ghent University. Her research concerns the ways in which people seek to have access to livelihoods and services in the midst of crises, how institutions form and reform in crises and how aid interventions affect conditions and societies experiencing humanitarian crises. Her publications focus on the everyday practices of humanitarian aid, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, reconstruction and peace building. She coordinates research programmes in Angola, DRC, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sudan, Mozambique and Uganda. She has recently published the volume: Disaster, conflict and society. Everyday politics of crisis and crisis response (London: Routledge). She is general secretary of the International Humanitarian Studies Association.
Location: Facultaire Raadzaal Rechten, Emile Braunschool, Volderstraat 3, 9000 Gent
Admission is free, but registration is required via Event Manager: https://webapps.ugent.be/eventManager/events/PublicLectureHilhorst
Rethinking global interventions – Friday April 24, 12.30-14.00
Bringing in the local: new critiques of global interventions by David Chandler (University of Westminster, UK)
This talk reflects upon understandings of the limits of global intervention which have emerged to prominence over the last ten years, particularly critiques which focus on the epistemological claims of causal knowledge, and the interaction between the global (universal) and the local (particular). In this shift, the means and mechanisms of international intervention have been transformed, no longer focused on the universal application of Western causal knowledge through policy interventions but rather on the effects of specific and unique local and organic processes at work in societies themselves. Moving beyond the dichotomous understanding of the global versus the local, this focus recasts problems in increasingly organicised ways, suggesting that artificial or hubristic attempts at socio-political intervention should be excluded or minimised.
David Chandler is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster, London. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding and Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses and author/editor or around twenty books, his most recent monograph is Resilience: The Governance of Complexity (Routledge, 2014).
Location: Facultaire Raadzaal Rechten, Emile Braunschool, Volderstraat 3, 9000 Gent
Admission is free, but registration is required via Event Manager: https://webapps.ugent.be/eventManager/events/PublicLectureChandler