International Networks
One of the key ambitions for CSPI is to foster the development of an active international network of researchers working in the area of political ideologies.
We are committed to the internationalisation of ideologies research, and we take the comparative dimension of ideology analysis to be fundamental to an adequate understanding of political thinking, and to the depth and breadth of research associated with the centre.
For all that there is always scope for, and value in, detailed case study analysis, research in political ideologies cannot be an exclusively parochial undertaking.
To this end the centre has a number of early-stage international collaborations that we are looking to develop into long-term productive relationships with colleagues around the world. This currently includes:
Relating Ideologies: The migration of ideas between political thought systems
Sponsored by the University of Nottingham's Centre for Advanced Studies and the schools of Politics and International Relations and History
Within the framework of CSPI's understanding of ideologies as patterned forms of political thought and behaviours, this three-day interdisciplinary symposium at the University of Virginia, involving six political theorists and six historians, explored the mutually constitutive relationship between ideologies.
How and why ideas and political intuitions 'break off' from one ideological system and 'attach' themselves to another was debated. This is to combine a comparative perspective between different spatial and historical contexts with a trans-ideological perspective, which focuses on the transfers and flows between such contexts. Discussion was structured around three thematic clusters that are encountered within different ideological discourses and behaviours:
- Equality, rights, and citizenship
- Race, ancestry, and territoriality
- Time, development, and modernity
Participants included:
- Mark Antliff (Duke University)
- Peter Breiner (SUNY)
- Howard Brick (University of Michigan)
- Alan Confino (University of Virginia)
- Michael Freeden (University of Nottingham)
- John G Gunnell (SUNY)
- Mathew Humphrey (University of Nottingham)
- David Laycock (Simon Fraser University)
- Kris Manjapra (Tufts University)
- Cas Mudde (University of Georgia)
- Maiken Umbach (University of Nottingham)
- Janet Ward (University of Oklahoma)
Ideological Translations Project
The ‘Ideological Translations Project’, which has resulted in the Ideologies in Action volume, the special issue of the Journal of Political Ideologies, and an edited collection with UBC Press has, as noted last year, most closely involved the Dept of Political Science at Simon Fraser University, which hosted one of two workshops, and the Department of History at the University of Michigan. A book version of the JPI volume, 'Ideologies in Action: Morphological Adapatation and Political Ideas', was published by Routledge in October 2020.
Tri-campus research centre
We are also in collaboration at the University of Nottingham's campuses in China and Malaysia and branches of the CSPI are established at each of these campuses.
Links with the History of Concepts group
The CSPI is engaged in discussion with the internationally organised History of Concepts Group to further research collaboration, including hosting an international conference as well as workshops, to take place at Nottingham.
Recent applications for funding, if successful, will involve new international partners.