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Join us on May 7th and 8th\ , 2021\, for a lively set of panel and roundtable sessions hosted by the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbi a and organized by the Political Science Graduate Student Association of UB C.
This year's theme\, Contending Uncertainties\, will reflect on rec ent and ongoing events in a lively set of panel sessions\, as well as featu re a professional development roundtable on non-academic career opportuniti es. We are excited to announce that this year's keynote speaker is Professo r Yves Tiberghian of the Department of Political Science\, who will share i nsights from his forthcoming book entitled Geopolitics in East Asia: Respon se to COVID-19.
Full program details and Zoom access information will be emailed out to all registered participants prior to the conference.
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[accordions collapsible=true active=false][accordion title="About the event"]An urgent sense of upheaval and uncertainty has bee n a pervasive feature of the most recent past year. While the COVID-19 pand emic marked an abrupt alteration in daily lives across the globe\, the poli tical turmoil of the US presidential election has challenged the nation’s v ery tradition of democracy. Economic uncertainty has also prevailed: at a g lobal level\, the longstanding US-China trade war and other trade frictions across developed and developing countries have elicited fundamental doubts in the multilateral trading system\; at the same time\, the pandemic has p laced millions of people on precarity’s doorstep. All the while\, mass prot est movements\, galvanized by anger at repressive governments\, the desire for civil justice\, and in some cases\, misinformation\, have agitated for transformative change.
At the same time\, could these\, and other\, c urrently developing events be better characterized instead as transient abn ormalities? Even more critically\, are current claims to being in an unprec edented era of disruption and transformation perhaps obscuring more than th ey reveal? Amid recent tumult\, threads of continuity also link present to past: violence against Black\, Indigenous\, and trans people\, unabated env ironmental degradation and greenhouse gas emissions\, and disparity in weal th between rich and poor have remained in place as urgent but enduring prob lems. Meanwhile\, while the inertia of institutions\, including those of co lonialism\, lends them a certain resilience\, the same quality underscores the sense of intractability in arriving at\, and implementing\, meaningful changes and solutions.
Participants at our annual conference\, approp riately given the title "Contending Uncertainties" this year\, will engage with the above themes\, asking questions such as: How are we to make sense of such apparently contradictory qualities and contending uncertainties emb odied in the present? Has uncertainty upended the status quo\, or is the ne w normal a state of continual unpredictability\, insecurity\, and risk? Wit hin Political Science\, and the social sciences more generally\, are our th eories and methodologies adequate towards helping us understand the uncerta inties and fluctuations of the present? And what can we extrapolate from ou r observations that might indicate emergent potentials and future condition s? Where should we look to find promise for a better future for coming gene rations\, and how should we seek justice in the present?
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