Progressive Geographies

Miles Ogborn, The Freedom of Speech: Talk and Slavery in the Anglo-Caribbean World, University of Chicago Press, 2019

The institution of slavery has always depended on enforcing the boundaries between slaveholders and the enslaved. As historical geographer Miles Ogborn reveals in The Freedom of Speech, across the Anglo-Caribbean world the fundamental distinction between freedom and bondage relied upon the violent policing of the spoken word. Offering a compelling new lens on transatlantic slavery, this book gathers rich historical data from Barbados, Jamaica, and Britain to delve into the complex relationships between voice, slavery, and empire. From the most quotidian encounters to formal rules of what counted as evidence in court, the battleground of slavery lay in who could speak and under what conditions. But, as Ogborn shows through keen attention to both the traces of talk and the silences in the archives, if enslavement as a legal status could be made by words, it could be unmade by them as well. A deft interrogation of the duality of domination, The Freedom of Speech offers a rich interpretation of oral cultures that both supported and constantly threatened to undermine the slave system.

The Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) at the University of Warwick is pleased to announce that up to five fellowships will be available in 2019 as part of the Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Leadership programme (WIRL-COFUND). The WIRL-COFUND fellowships are jointly funded by the University of Warwick and the European Union through the Marie Skłodowska Curie COFUND scheme (Grant Agreement 713548). The fellowships will provide the opportunity for outstanding early career researchers from around the world to spend two years at Warwick, developing their independent research and undertaking training which will help them develop into the next generation of research leaders.

These two-year fellowships will offer successful applicants the opportunity to accelerate their research careers by developing their own independent research ideas in a world-leading research environment whilst undertaking a specific programme of advanced training delivered through the IAS Academic Careers and Leadership Programme.

Five 2-year independent Fellowships will be available to outstanding early career researchers, with successful candidates starting in September 2020.

Candidates are strongly encouraged to be in contact with host academic departments and mentors prior to applying.

Applications will be accepted from 1 October to 30 November 2019. Full details of the scheme can be found at www.warwick.ac.uk/wirl

The Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick have two post-doctoral positions available, and seek your help sharing the vacancies.  Each post-doc has a fixed four-year term of employment, working on the European Research Council funded project ‘Neoliberal Terror: The Radicalisation of Social Policy in Europe’. This project investigates the political, economic and discursive mechanisms which have brought counterterrorism into European health and social care sectors. Doctors, nurses and social care professionals are now responsible for noticing, checking and sharing signs of radicalisation as part of national terrorism prevention programs. The project tests the hypothesis that neoliberalism contextualises and influences the diffusion of Countering Violent Extremism policies.

The closing date for both positions is the 31st October.

The qualitative position is centred around a large discourse analysis of European policies, speeches and instruments relating to CVE (Countering Violent Extremism), but will also involve some research interviews with practitioners. The vacancy can be found here.

The quantitative position is centred around building an index of CVE expansion across European nations, then performing a regression analysis to test the association between CVE expansion and neoliberal social/economic indicators. The vacancy can be found here.

For further information, please contact Dr Charlotte Heath-Kelly at C.Heath-Kelly@warwick.ac.uk