Associate Professor Dr. Kandida Purnell chairs at Reconnecting International Studies Convention 

This week, Dr. Kandida Purnell, Associate Professor of International Relations and Director of our ‘The State, Power, and Globalisation” (SPG) Research Centre, attended Reconnecting International Studies, the 66th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA) held in Chicago, USA. 

“International studies scholarship encompasses increasingly diverse research agendas and has become more explicitly interdisciplinary and global,” they wrote in their call. “The ISA reflects this. Its membership represents a broad range of disciplines, and is international and diverse (…) It also creates the risk that conversations increasingly take place in small circles of like-minded scholars, rather than broadly within the association. The conference seeks to reconnect scholars across these boundaries and invites proposals that work toward a common identity for international studies.”  

Additionally, they focus on teaching within International Studies. “In our increasingly interconnected world, understanding international and global affairs is an increasingly vital skill for our students. How does reconceptualizing international studies education as a foundation for (international) civic engagement influence what – and how – we teach?”  

Dr. Purnell told us, “attending the ISA and representing Richmond there was a fantastic opportunity to share my research, meet, and learn from others working in my field. I also developed ideas and plans for future research projects and publications as well as teaching activities through my participation.” 

Dr. Purnell chaired two roundtables:  

Author Meets Critics: Weaponizing Civilian Protection: Counterinsurgency and Collateral Damage in Afghanistan, Thomas Gregory (02/03/25) 

This ‘author meets critics’ roundtable was co-sponsored by the International Political Sociology and International Security Studies sections of the ISA in Kandida discussed and celebrated Dr Thomas Gregory’s book published by Oxford University Press this year ‘Weaponizing Civilian Protection: Counterinsurgency and Collateral Damage in Afghanistan.’  

Corporeal Connections: Land, Flesh, and the Embodiment of Global Politics (03/03/25) 

This roundtable was co-chaired by Kandida Purnell (Associate Professor of IR at Richmond, American University London) and Lauren Wilcox (Associate Professor in Gender Studies and Director of the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies). The co-chairs and participants discussed how the human body and the body politic are intimately connected and proposed that what is said about, seen of, or felt by one may materialise in and as the land or flesh of the other.