Call for papers

What is the relationship between pandemics and maritime security? This question was very rarely – if ever – raised in 2019. Since early 2020, however, the situation has changed significantly. Measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 had massive implications across the world. Among many other industries, shipping has been significantly affected. Lockdowns and travel restrictions, as well as changes in trading patterns, are the main examples.

Despite some alarming headlines in recent months, there are currently no indications that Covid-19 has led to higher threat levels for piracy or other typical maritime security threats. Moreover, regional or local conditions are much more important than a global pandemic to determine such threat levels.

At the same time, Covid-19 – or other pandemics in the future – may have long-term implications on maritime security. Maritime trade, for example, is vital for trade flows of all types of cargoes around the world. Effective cargo operations are necessary for economic growth and stability, yet these operations have been affected by closed borders which have hampered the flow of goods and people.

The Centre for Trust, Peace, and Social Relations (CTPSR) at Coventry University in the United Kingdom offers a fully-funded position for a PhD researcher who wants to look into these issues. The description of the PhD offers a good introduction into some of the key topics:

Existing literature on the conceptualisation of maritime security doesn’t identify pandemics as one of the key contemporary challenges that affect maritime and human security.

The aim of this study is to examine the extent to which pandemics could be considered as a non-traditional maritime security challenge by utilising the case study of the recent Covid-19 outbreak. It will examine in depth the impact of the pandemic on maritime trade and border management within the framework of the measures implemented by the governments of the UK and Ireland (or one other EU country) to limit the spread of the virus.

Further information as well as the details about the application process are available on the website of Coventry University here.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, maritime webinars have been increasingly popular. Many conferences and seminars have been cancelled in recent weeks. Even though restrictions are being eased in most countries at the moment, it is hard to imagine that the world will simply go back to normal.

In the meantime, webinars have become increasingly popular. These formats offer various types of organisations the chance to provide insights about their own knowledge and research. For participants, it is very easy to take part in many sessions that would otherwise not be accessible. Being part of a virtual discussion is much less time-consuming and a lot cheaper than travelling in person to a conference.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to be online all the time. Without being part of the discussion, webinars still offer the advantage of a recording. For participants who may have missed the actual session, this is a perfect opportunity to catch up on some background knowledge.

For maritime webinars in particular, Glen Wright and Klaudija Cremers from the IDDRI think tank had the idea to create an easily accessible overview that includes links to the recorded sessions. The list can be filtered by organisers, topics and languages and can be found here.

The Christian Michelsen Institute, based in Bergen (Norway), is currently looking for three postdoc researchers as part of a new project. “Transoceanic Fishers: Multiple Mobilities in and out of the South China Sea (TransOcean)” is funded by the European Reserach Council and led by Senior Researcher Edyta Roszko.

Applicants should have a background in socio-cultural anthropology, human geography or a related discipline. Moreover, they should have some expertise in the Pacific, Africa, and China. The successful candidates will have an opportunity to develop their sub-projects, conduct ethnographic field research, contribute to spatial analysis, publications, as well as seminars, workshops and conferences.

Two of the postdoc positions involve extensive research in East or West Africa. Starting date for all positions is 1 February 2021, although this may be postponed until no later than 1 September 2021 due to the current Covid-19 pandemic.

More information about the Christian Michelsen Institute and this new project can be found on the CMI website.

From 8 to 11 September 2020, the Corbett Centre will host a large maritime security-themed conference at King’s College in London. It will focus upon the links between maritime power and international relations in the past, present and future. Proposals for presentations can be submitted until 1 June.

The purpose of the Corbett Centre is to develop and promote the understanding and analysis of maritime policy and strategy through the interaction of policy-makers, practitioners, academics, industry and commerce. The 2020 Corbett Centre Conference covers an important subject for academic and policy debates around the world. It is aimed at bringing together an international array of scholars, practitioners and policymakers whose focus is the link between maritime power and national security strategy formulations.

Questions related to political, economic, military, commercial, technological, intelligence, force structures, defence economics, cultural and security dimensions will be addressed, all of which are underpinned by the use of the sea. Panels which focus on regional conditions with regard to maritime security and strategy are also welcome.

The world economy, political integration and shared security concerns are continually being linked to issues within the maritime environment, or global commons. Therefore, there is a pressing need to establish a regularly occurring interaction of researchers who can bring significant methodologies to the analysis of the state of maritime power, maritime strategy, and maritime security in a holistic and multi-disciplinary fashion.

The conference will produce an edited volume for the Corbett Centre Series on Maritime Policy Studies from a selection of papers, as well as encourage publication in journals closely linked to the centre, such as the Naval Review and Global War Studies. The conference will be held in London at King’s College facilities.

The detailed call for papers can be found on this website. All details regarding the registration for the conference can also be found there.

The Centre for Maritime Law and Security (CEMLAWS) Africa will run two five-day courses for maritime professionals in August and November 2018 respectively. Both programmes will be conducted in Accra, Ghana.

From 6 to 10 August, the course Maritime Regulation and Enforcement will introduce participants to a broad range of regulatory frameworks for maritime operations. Participants will also be enabled to identify enforcement instruments suitable for their countries and equipped with skills to ensure the security and good order of the maritime environment.

From 12 to 16 November, the course Maritime Administration, Ports Management and Shipping Law will provide a deep insight into shipping law, help participants to understand maritime administration and provide additional skills for the management of organisations with a maritime remit.

The target audience for both courses includes personnel from navies, coastguards and marine police forces, personnel in the shipping and offshore oil and gas industries, lawyers and state attorneys as well as officials from ministries and departments including environment, fisheries, customs and immigration.

CEMLAWS Africa is a non-governmental organisation which aims at enhancing ocean governance and maritime security in Africa. The centre seeks to promote effective national, regional and international responses to ocean governance and maritime security through training and capacity building, research, policy analysis and expert-driven deliberations.

Further information about both courses and other CEMLAWS activities is available on the website.

In September 2018, the International Ocean Institute will run a training programme for ocean governance in Africa. The course will be held in Cape Town, South Africa. Applications are still open, deadline is on 13 April.

The course is designed to contribute to building a sustainable core of experts on ocean governance for the continent and is intended for professionals, managers, educators, researchers and civil society members that have coastal and marine related responsibilities, functions or interests, preferably from or with an interest in countries within the African region.

Further information about the course and the application procedures are available on the course page.

On 18 and 19 January 2018, a conference on Europe, Maritime Security and Small Navies will be held at King’s College in London. The conference is organised jointly by the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies at King’s College, the Centre for Military History and Strategic Studies at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth and the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University.

The conference seeks to identify gaps in the field of maritime security and the role of small navies in Europe, including information sharing, capacity building and capability development alongside actions (collaborative or otherwise) aimed at achieving more efficient and effective maritime security operations. With an increasingly connected, contested and complex international maritime security climate, this conference also aims to develop better understandings of the strategic utility and operational nuances of smaller navies in addressing emergent threats (both in coastal and blue-water spaces).

This is crucial given that 75% of the EU’s external trade and 30% of its internal trade is seaborne. In addition, this conference wishes to examine how maritime security and naval development in Europe will evolve given that economic forecasts will likely limit the potential procurement of ‘larger’ naval assets in the future, which means that European states will increasingly have to do more with less in their own maritime domain.

Threats to European maritime security are multifaceted and perpetrated by a broad collection of transnational actors with diverse objectives; ranging from piracy and armed robbery against merchant vessels, illegal migration flows in the Mediterranean and the exploitation of marine resources to the growing accessibility of the Arctic (due to climate change), geo-political tensions in the Black Sea, and an increasingly mobile Islamist terrorist threat. The maritime environment will likely be the frontline of European security within the next decade.

The complete call for papers for the conference Europe, Maritime Security and Small Navies is available on the King’s College website. Deadline for abstracts is 30 August 2017.

From 11 to 13 December 2017, the University of Sydney hosts a large conference about “fish, oceanic space and the politics of caring”. Sustaining the Seas is an exciting and experimental refereed international conference that will bring together academics of many disciplines, practitioners, urban planners, artists and writers to consider over three days the challenges of how to care better for the oceans, fish and marine ecological systems.

Everybody has tacit relationships with and dependence on the oceans. “Fish-as-food recalibrates the extent to which anyone can choose to opt out of dominant food regimes by saying, ‘I don’t eat fish’. As it stands, we all eat fish albeit often in circuitous ways” (Probyn, Eating the Ocean). One of the greatest contemporary challenges is how to eat the oceans better and fairer: for fish, fishermen and their aquatic ecosystems. Sustaining the seas is one of the most pressing global challenges for the planet and all her inhabitants. How to do justice to this challenge is an exigency for all scholars, and how to represent the oceans is a guiding theme in the conference that will be addressed by scholars, artists, and practitioners.

Understanding complexity, including social, cultural, ecological and economic interconnections, is crucial to any solution. Hosted by the Sustainable Fish Lab at the University of Sydney, the conference will take place in one of the world’s most beautiful yet troubled harbour cities. This will be a unique opportunity to engage with local and global oceanic complexities through panel discussions, keynote speakers, films, demonstrations of innovative practice, and fieldtrips.

The organisers welcome proposals on these topics and many more:

• Fish markets: including anthropological, cultural studies, tourism, geographical, and economical perspectives;
• Regulation of the high seas and the Law of the Sea;
• Oceanic warming, acidity and toxicity; geo-engineering;
• Forms of certification, governance, and traceability;
• Global South & North, northern hemisphere & southern hemisphere;
• Knowledges: gender, traditional, Indigenous, generational;
• Consumer engagement tactics that emphasise complexity rather than simplification;
• Indigenous/cultural fisheries;
• Gender, ethnicity, race, fish; queer fish;
• New forms of aquaculture and integrated marine tropic relationships;
• Global ocean grabbing, piracy, IUU.
• Methodologies, multidisciplinary and multimedia forms of representation.

More details about the conference and about the call for papers as well as the call for creative provocations can be found on the conference website. Deadline for abstracts is 14 July 2017.

Over the past few decades there has been significant debate as to the place and shape of maritime history. In January 2008, the Council of the American Historical Association added ‘Maritime, including Naval’ to its taxonomy of academic specialties. But since then, it has been suggested that the field has been marginalised.  Or does the growth of new areas of interest – such as the study of port towns, the ‘Atlantic World,’ Coastal History, and the role of gender in maritime history – suggest a flourishing, if more diverse, environment? What is the state of other research-orientated maritime activities such as public history and heritage?

The Greenwich Maritime Centre and the Society for Nautical Research are excited to announce a major conference to be held at the University of Greenwich to consider these questions. The conference will bring together contributors from within the broad field of maritime history. Participants will also include academics who write on maritime and coastal topics, but do not consider themselves maritime historians. Papers and key discussion points will be published in hard copy and/or online by the Society of Nautical Research.

Papers on maritime history research

Proposals are invited for papers on any of the following aspects, or on related and relevant themes. The principal criterion for acceptance is the extent to which a paper provides a broad overview of the current situation in a specific field, and of the prospects for the future, rather than narrow, descriptive accounts of a particular period of history or historic ship.

• The study of maritime history in the university and school sectors
• The state of maritime research in particular geographical regions and countries
• The state of particular sub-disciplines within maritime history and research, e.g. naval history, nautical archaeology, port towns, coastal studies
• The health of the maritime museums sector, and current and future challenges for it
• The state of the historic ships and craft sector
• ‘Sea blindness’: fact or fiction?

Proposals of 500 words, together with a short biography of no more than 150 words, should be submitted by 1 June 2017 on this website which includes some additional information on the call for papers. More information on the Greenwich Maritime Centre can be found here.

The International Harbour Masters’ Association (IHMA) is pleased to invite interested participants to submit a 400-600 word abstract of a proposed paper for the 11th IHMA Congress, to be held in London on 25 to 28 June 2018.

Addressing the theme ‘Ports – Essential for Safe, Efficient and Secure Global Trade’ the Congress program will be designed to appeal to all those responsible for the safe, secure and efficient conduct of maritime operations in ports and industry organisations working with, or within ports across all levels of the industry spectrum.

This is a good opportunity to put forward ideas, case studies and technical research on the innovations that will promote safe, efficient and secure maritime logistics, improve cooperation between ports and ships, develop best practice, and raise global standards for the safety, security and efficiency of ports.

A detailed list of potential topics can be found on the IHMA website. Deadline for submissions is 19 May 2017, authors will be notified on 7 August 2017.