Professor Gearoid Millar will present two co-authored papers at the International Studies Association Annual Convention in Montreal this week, with Dr Manu Lekunze (Politics and International Relations, Aberdeen) and Dr Sukanya Podder (King's College London).
The first panel will take place on March 15, during which Dr Lekunze and Prof. Millar will discuss their paper entitled, 'Security and Complexity across Time and Scale: The Case of Mali'.
In the study, the authors consider the case of Mali to show how security (including local, national, regional and global security) evidences the characteristics of a complex adaptive system.
In the context of Mali, they conclude, national security in any one case is an emergent property of a wider complex adaptive system, and Mali, as a result, cannot be considered in isolation from wider security systems at regional and even global scales.
In his second panel, on March 17, Dr Podder and Prof. Millar will deliver their paper entitled, 'Insights from Indigenous Monitoring and Evaluation for Peace Work', which looks at examples of Indigenous Monitoring and Evaluation (IM&E) and its potential to inform new practice in peace work.
Evaluation has regularly been critiqued as driven by accountability to funders instead of to the supposed beneficiaries of peace work
In particular, the paper critiques the prevelance of "simplistic positivist methodologies" that have little ability to assess the varied, interrelated, and often contradictory impacts of peace work on the ground.
Centering on the significance and impact of labels such as civilian, ex-combatant, men, women, and children (among others), the study explores, among other facets, the interaction between international and local protection norms.