BSIA

Overview

The graduate student community of the Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA) is pleased to present the first Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference on Global Governance from October 20 – 22, 2011 in Waterloo, Ontario: Imagining Global Governance – Change and Continuity.

Download the Conference Report

The conference provides an opportunity for the BSIA community to present and challenge ongoing local research, and to reach out to academic institutions around the globe to build a strong and vibrant network of students, scholars and practitioners from a diversity of disciplines and professions related to global governance.

An important element of the BSIA vision is to get serious about the ‘global’ in global governance and to develop ideas and concepts that integrate Northern and Southern perspectives on global problems and solutions. Rather than providing a Northern perspective on Southern problems, or merely problematizing the North-South divide as a political challenge for global governance, we seek to integrate perspectives from the Global North and South – in the same class room, on the same panel, and in the same research project. The BSIA conference will make a first contribution to building a viable scholarly bridge across the North-South divide by focusing on the participation of graduate students from the Global South to complement international participation from North America and Europe. We are committing significant effort and resources to reach out to Southern universities and research centers to encourage and financially support participants from developing countries and emerging economies. 

The theme of the conference, Imagining Global Governance: Change and Continuity is intended to capture the growing maturation of global governance in both theory and practice, as well as the difficulties and optimisms of the road ahead. Reflecting on the past, present and future of global governance it is critical to ask questions about the discourses and silences of the field, the shifting power and roles of emerging and waning actors, the spirit of global consensus if any exist, and the nature of the ‘global’ in global governance. The conference will delve into six different themes of global governance, which are elaborated in more detail in the Call for Papers :

• Global Political Economy: Is This Time Different?
• Environmental Governance: Think Global, Act Global?
• Conflict and Security: Post-post-9/11?
• Global Justice and Human Rights: A Legitimate Order?
• Multilateral Institutions and Diplomacy: Changing Relevance?
• From Local to Global: The Shifting Boundaries of Social Governance?

We hope to welcome graduate and post-doctoral students from all five continents with a diversity of disciplinary backgrounds this fall in Waterloo. (Papers on the sixth continent would be welcome, too.) Together we will discuss some of the most pressing global governance challenges of this century, build social and professional networks that will enrich our lives and our future work, critically engage with multiple concepts of global governance, and maybe start creating one or multiple conceptions of our own.

The event will celebrate the opening of the BSIA’s new campus by bringing together graduate students, scholars and practitioners from a diversity of disciplines and countries in order to showcase innovative research and to encourage dialogue on pressing challenges and opportunities in the field of global governance.

The Balsillie School for International Affairs is a centre for advanced research and teaching on global governance and international public policy. The School was founded in 2007 as a joint project by the University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and the Center for International Governance Innovation, and is located in Waterloo, Ontario – Canada’s hub for innovation and technology. It has attracted a diverse community of world-class faculty and has experienced quickly rising interest in graduate programs.

We thank the BSIA for its financial support of the conference, without which the event would not be possible!

Important documents and links:

Call for Papers

Application Form 

If you have questions or would be interested in partnering with us in organizing the conference, please emailiggconference@balsillieschool.ca.

You can follow us on http://www.facebook.com/BSIA2011.

Organizing Committee:

Co-Chairs:
Sarah Martin (smartin@balsillieschool.ca) & Manjana Milkoreit (mmilkoreit@balsillieschool.ca)

Programming:
Branka Marijan (bmarijan@balsillieschool.ca)

Finance:
Sarah Martin (smartin@balsillieschool.ca)

Logistics:
Manjana Milkoreit (mmilkoreit@balsillieschool.ca)

Communications:
Tracey Wagner-Rizvi (trizvi@balsillieschool.ca)