Month: January 2019

CALL FOR PAPERS: Affect in Organizational Renewal

Workshop 17-18 June 2019
Aalto University School of Business, Finland

Keynote speakers:

Professor Silvia Gherardi: Affective ethnography and organizational change Department of Sociology, University of Trento, Italy

Professor Kate Kenny: Speaking out, censorship and the regulation of affect J.E. Cairnes School of Business and Economics, NUI Galway, Ireland

Professor Alison Pullen: The politics and ethics of affect Department of Management, Macquerie University, Sydney Australia

Organizational renewal is usually seen as an outcome of deliberate rational practices such as employee training and work design. There is an important affective dimension to organizational renewal, however, which until recently has received relatively little attention among management and organization scholars. Affect refers to a body’s capacity to affect and be affected, and the intensities that emerge from these encounters (Massumi, 2002). It is a non- reflective bodily response, such as excitement or shame, that is created in relations between humans and materialities such as technology (Gherardi, 2017; Katila, Laine & Parkkari, 2017).

While affect is difficult to control and may diminish actors’ capacity to act, it can also enhance actors’ capacity to act collectively in new ways (Michels & Steyaert, 2017). For example, affective (organizational) experiences have the capacity to unite people: to turn private affective experiences into collective experiences with political potential (Pullen et al., 2017; Vachhani & Pullen, 2019). Depending on the nature of such affective experiences, the political potential may work towards or against organizational renewal initiatives. Affect can, thus, be seen as critical ingredient in any organizational renewal process, as it includes action-potential (Duff, 2010) while also playing a pivotal role in institutional identity work (Katila, Laine & Parkkari, 2017).

In this workshop, we focus on the emerging discussion on affect-based understandings of organizations in general (Fotaki, Kenny & Vachhani, 2017; Gherardi, 2017) and organizational renewal in particular. We explore how affective experiences emerge within organizational practices, what they do, and how they can be manipulated to support (or contest) organizational renewal. We also work toward new methodological approaches to “capture” and better understand affective experiences in organizations. The workshop will be organized around keynote presentations, paper presentations, roundtable discussions, and collaborative activities.

Abstract submission

Dear All,

Welcome to an open special session of the doctoral seminar in World Politics, on feminist international political economy, Erin Hannah and Silke Trommer will be speaking on “Trading in Gender Equality: An Opportunity for Whom”.

Dr. Hannah is Chair of the Department of Political Science at King’s University College at the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Trommer teaches at University of Manchester, and as many of you surely remember, she was both a doctoral student and lecturer in World Politics at Helsinki.

Either during the talk or in the more informal session that we will probably have after it, Silke Trommer will also be willing to share her thoughts on career perspectives after a Helsinki doctoral degree. Her dissertation, I am happy to remind you, won various international and national awards, including the ISA’s award for the best dissertation in International Political Economy.

The session will take place on Wednesday, Jan 16, at 14-16 hours, in the room P673 at Porthania.

More details below, and here is a link to a FB event of the session: https://www.facebook.com/events/778776002470512/

Feel free to share the invitation. More information below.

Welcome,

Teivo

Trading in Gender Equality: An Opportunity for Whom?

Erin Hannah (King’s University College at the University of Western Ontario)

Silke Trommer (University of Manchester)

Wednesday January 16, 2-4 PM.

Porthania (Yliopistokatu 3), Lecture Hall P673 (6th floor).

This session centres on research the speakers are currently conducting (with Adrienne Roberts at the University of Manchester) on the recent move toward bringing the goals of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ into trade policy in the UK and globally.

They explore some of the reasons why the idea of gendering global trade has become so pervasive at the contemporary conjuncture – a time when many of the civil society organizations that emerged in wake of the 1999 WTO protests with an interest in pushing for a feminist trade agenda have disappeared. Using examples such as the WTOs ‘Joint Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment’, the gender chapters that have been added to several bilateral trade agreements, and recent global initiatives such as ‘SheTrades’, they ask who stands to gain from attempts to make trade more equitable for women.

They use the lens of feminist international political economy to critically interrogate the openings as well as the foreclosures that come with this most recent effort at mainstreaming gender concerns within global economic relationships.

The session is open to all, and forms part of the open sessions series of the Doctoral Seminar in World Politics. For more information, contact Teivo Teivainen (050-3505120).

Dear HYMY doctoral students,

Welcome to the launch of the new book “Memory – access denied? Political landscapes of memory and inclusion in contemporary Europe”, edited by Deniss Hanovs and Igors Gubenko, on Tuesday, January 15th at 3:15 pm. The event will be held in the Common Room of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (Fabianinkatu 24, 3rd floor) and it is free and open to the public. There will also be a reception to follow the book presentation and discussion.

The book, published by Zinātne Publishers, brings together essays focusing on minorities and counter-memories, and strategies of exclusion and inclusion in specific political contexts. All the essays deal with cases in which access to memory is obstructed in some way. The book searches for new theoretical innovations, seeks to test the limits of methodologies available, and looks for new mnemonic practices and media emerging in different social milieus. The introduction to the volume is written by the leading memory studies scholar Aleida Assmann.

Read more about the book here: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/society-economy/book-launch-at-helsinki-collegium-memory-access-denied-edited-by-former-hcas-fellows

Welcome!

The event is organised by the Helsinki Collegium in cooperation with The Konrad Adenauer Foundation. 

The University of Helsinki is a member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU), an association of 23 leading research-intensive universities that share the values of high-quality teaching within an environment of internationally competitive research. Each year, LERU organizes a Doctoral Summer School on a specific topic. All member universities of LERU are invited to send one doctoral candidate to participate in the meeting.

The 10th LERU Doctoral Summer School will be held at the University of Edinburgh from 15 until 19 July 2019.

The theme of the 2019 LERU Doctoral Summer School is “Building Research Capacity and a Collaborative Global Community”.

The focus will be on international collaboration, giving participants the dual benefits of an enhanced understanding of the nature and importance of collaboration, whilst simultaneously creating a multi-disciplinary, global network for their future careers.

Doctoral candidates from all disciplines are encouraged to apply. Candidates should be in an advanced stage of the doctoral studies and research and be highly motivated to work intensively on this project in an international and interdisciplinary team.

The participation fee (including accommodation) and travel expenses (Economy) of the selected participants from the University of Helsinki are covered by the Doctoral Schools.

For more information and to apply, please visit https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/94935/lomake.html

Deadline for applications is 1 March 2019.

”The best parts of the Summer School were the multidisciplinary team work and the opportunity to learn from the other participants. The Summer School offered great experience and skills on leadership, facilitation, project work, and science communication. The Summer School teachers and hosts were absolutely devoted to their subject, and the course was so intense that much was left to re-live and reflect for the weeks that followed. I met fantastic people and grew my network with a bunch of new, wonderful colleagues from different fields and cultures all over the world.”
– Mariella Aalto-Araneda, Doctoral Programme in Food Chain and Health, participant to the LERU Summer School 2018

The e-lomake for signing in the course opens today, on Monday, 14th, January 2019, at 12 o’clock. You will be asked to give a short motivation why this course would be suitable for you this Spring.

The aim of the course is to prepare an academic article during the course. The course provides frames, feedback, peer-support, and discipline for preparing an article in twelve weeks. After the course the student will be better equipped for preparing and determining a topic and research question, defining basic concepts, taking and giving feedback, finding several suitable journals from his/her field, learns how to respond to referee statements, and proceeds with the dissertation.

The course is well-suited especially for students who have worked with their dissertations at least a year.

Course material: everybody chooses his/her own topic from their dissertation. In addition, Wendy Laura Belcher’s Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve weeks.

Maximum amount of students: 12

Teacher: Päivi Salmesvuori

Course timetable:

There will be two different courses, which are both held on Thursdays 24.1 – 9.5. You can only sign in for one course!

Morning: Thursdays 10-12

https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/94570/lomake.html

Afternoon: Thursdays 14-16

https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/94571/lomake.html

For more information contact: Päivi Salmesvuori