Tag: Conference

Cameron Hunter speaks at UK MoD Outer Space Security and KU PLA Conferences

Last week, Dr Cameron Hunter of the RITUAL DETERRENCE project spoke at two conferences. The first was a closed event sponsored by the UK Ministry of Defence on security in outer space, including deterrence. NATO, China, and to a lesser extent Russia, all utilise space for military purposes in both peace and wartime. Dr Hunter’s previous research was on US-China competition in orbit, with a more recent report on space-based nuclear weapons delivery vehicles. The conference was held under the Chatham House Rule.

The second event was held at Copenhagen University, sponsored by the Danish Ministry of Defence’s Centre for Military Studies. Bringing together international experts, the conference collectively compared the defence budgets of the US and China. Dr Hunter provided comments for Dr Jingdong Yuan’s lecture on the topic, and joined the plenary session at the end of the day to reflect on implications for the future.

Mariia Vladymyrova presents at NUPI IR Theory Conference 2025

22-24 September Mariia Vladymyrova joined the inaugural NUPI IR Theory Conference in Oslo.

Throughout three days and six panels scholars from Europe, North and South America shared their ideas on the relevance and pathways forward for constructivist theory amid increasingly assertive global competition and challenges such as climate change.

Mariia contributed to the panel on “Constructivism and Violence.” She presented an early draft of one of her dissertation projects’ chapters theorizing lawfare as means of ritualized coercive signaling, and looking into Russian approaches to lawfare within the framework of international laws governing peace- and wartime conduct at sea.

 

Ritual Deterrence Team at the ISA2025

Cameron Hunter and Maria Mälksoo participated in the 66th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA) in Chicago, US on 2-5 March 2025. Dr Hunter chaired the panel ‘Making Deterrence Possible: Rituals and Narratives in the Study of Deterrence’ and presented his work on interaction ritual chains in US-China nuclear politics therein. He further served as a chair and discussant of the panel on ‘Automated World-Making: Ethics, Culture, and Artificial Intelligence’, and presented a paper on ‘Cynicism and Nationalism in Contemporary Chinese Nuclear Pop Culture’.

Prof. Mälksoo convened a panel ‘Ritual Realms and Repertoires in World Politics’ which brought together a number of contributions for the forthcoming special issue of the project. She presented a paper ‘Deterrence at Arm’s Length: NATO and the Russian War on Ukraine’, and contributed to three roundtables: on ‘The Mnemonic Turn in IR’; ‘Honouring Stefano Guzzini as Global International Relations Section (GIRS) Distinguished Scholar’, and ‘Critical Perspectives on NATO’.

Thomas Fraise, Cameron Hunter and Maria Mälksoo at the ERC NUCLEAR concluding conference at Sciences Po

Cameron Hunter and Maria Mälksoo at CMS China’s Nuclear Force Conference

Thomas Fraise at the Danish Political Science Association Annual Conference

Maria Mälksoo at the Baltic Sea Conference

Ritual Deterrence Team Present Work at ISA, San Francisco

Ritual Deterrence joins 2023 UK DAAA conference

Maria Mälksoo at EISA PEC2023, Potsdam, 5-9 Sept 2023

Maria Mälksoo participates at the 16th EISA Pan-European Conference on International Relations (EISA PEC2023) at the University of Potsdam, Germany, on 5-9 Sept 2023. She presents her co-authored paper (with Jorg Kustermans) ‘Ritual and the limits of the everyday’ in the panel ‘The Practice Turn in IR and Its Critics’, convenes the roundtable on her edited volume Handbook on the Politics of Memory (Edward Elgar, 2023), participates in two roundtables (‘Let’s talk about war!’; ‘Wartime Heterarchy — Exploring the Nodes and Layers of the West-Russia-China relations’) and speaks at the main plenary session ‘Democratizing the construction of future orders’.