About International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group (ISET)
The ISET working group is concerned with ‘emergence’ in two senses: the implications and processes of the emergence of new technologies; and the emergence of challenges, forms of use and misuse, and governance of technologies (that is, our concern is not limited to anticipated future technologies). The broader questions concerning the governance of technologies provide the necessary impetus for a working group dedicated to their study. Furthermore, given its research focus, this working group has the potential to collaborate closely with other BISA working groups to hold joint events or co-sponsored panels at the annual conference.
Central to the vision for the working group is that it creates a space that is open, inclusive, and pluralist allowing for researchers to engage with a supportive and diverse community. While topics such as artificial intelligence, security, and military application of technology are important and likely to be key areas for ISET work, ISET has a vision of a research space for emerging technologies that is methodologically/theoretically open, with work that is realist, constructivist, critical, legal doctrinal, feminist, or decolonial in approach equally welcome, and broad in focus, whether in terms of the field (for example the security, social, or economic implications of technology), or the technologies themselves (such as artificial intelligence, energy systems, or cybernetic prosthetics to name just a few).
ISET Aims
The aims of the ISET working group are as follows:
- To provide a space for BISA members across all career stages to develop their research expertise in the international studies and emerging technologies, broadly defined.
- To energise and grow the BISA community through the hosting of regular virtual seminars that allow for researchers to present work in progress and receive feedback from the group convenors, promoting the work of the ISET group and by extension the work of BISA more broadly.
- To promote the work of BISA members through the publication of a regular newsletter that includes recent publications by ISET members, calls for papers, relevant events (including non-BISA organised events), as well as interesting technology-related news pieces that are relevant to international studies.
- To provide a clear pathway for development and mentoring, by including a postgraduate researcher convenor role to supplement the work of the two group convenors, who can assist with the development of the newsletter, as well as selecting papers for a dedicated PhD student panel at the BISA annual conference, where one of the group convenors will act as discussant for those papers, providing a supportive feedback process for junior academics who may be presenting their work for the first time at a large event.
Main Activities
1. To promote research in the field, ISET will organize fortnightly virtual seminars, allowing for the presentation of work-in-progress by BISA members, from Early Career Researchers through to academics at the forefront of the discipline, inviting partners from the public and private sectors to join as a means of demonstrating the quality of academic research being produced by the working group.
2. ISET will organise one face-to-face workshop annually, with details to be disseminated to BISA ISET members with more information and calls for expressions of interest closer to the time of the event.
3. The group will participate in BISA activities including the the BISA annual conference.
2. To provide support, advice, and mentoring to students interested in pursuing postgraduate studies (PhDs and postdocs) in this area, ISET will organize formal and informal workshops.
3. To engage with practitioners in both the private and public sector, ISET will organize public events discussing the significant challenges and opportunities deriving from emerging technologies.