The fourth Annual Conference of the BISA Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group (CSTWG) will be held at Nottingham Trent University from Monday 15th September to Tuesday 16th September 2014. The conference will feature panels and papers with a particular focus on the intersections between (counter-)terrorism, neoliberalism, and the everyday.
How should we understand terror? The securitisation of political violence has dominated the discussion of terror within public discourse and International Relations literatures, however important considerations of neoliberalism as terror remain somewhat sidelined in these debates. Are populations terrorised through neoliberal political policy as well as through the deployment of terror-rhetoric (as applied to political dissent and protest)? Should our explorations of the connections between neoliberalism and terror extend beyond consideration of the ideological and biopolitical constitution of security technologies, towards a broader conceptualisation of neoliberalism and/as terror? Since its inception the Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group has provided a space for critical and dissenting engagements with the politics of (counter-)terrorism. This has included, inter alia, problematising the production of ‘expert’ knowledge in Terrorism Studies; deconstructing and challenging dominant counter-terrorism practices; exploring experiences of counterterrorism at different levels of the socio-political; and, facilitating connections with cognate research fields including Peace Research and Gender Studies. Building on these interventions, this conference seeks to engage with the political, social and economic implications of current conceptualisations and practices of terrorism, and the concurrent theme of neoliberalism as terror. The working group encourages the submission of papers that focus on themes included, but not limited to:
– How has neoliberal policy/government shaped the way terrorism and counter-terrorism is produced?
– How should we interrogate neoliberalism as terror, alongside its production of terror-oriented security technologies?
– What are the everyday experiences of those subject to and of neoliberal assemblages which seek to prevent, combat and eradicate terrorism? In what ways can vernacular, narrative or story-telling approaches shed light on the ways in which contemporary modes of governing manifest themselves?
– Moreover, what, if any, are the resistances or challenges posed by subjects to these attempts at governing? Do ‘ordinary’ individuals or communities submit to technologies of governance, or do they find ways to subvert, overturn, resist or refuse the ways in which they are expected to behave?

Please submit paper abstracts of no more than 300 words, plus a short biography to any of the conference organisers by 30th June 2014: Christopher Baker-Beall, Nottingham Trent University: christopher.bakerbeall@ntu.ac.uk Charlotte Heath-Kelly, Warwick University: c.heath-kelly@warwick.ac.uk Lee Jarvis, University of East Anglia: l.jarvis@uea.ac.uk

The conference is sponsored by the British International Studies Association (BISA), Nottingham Trent University (NTU), the NTU Insecurity Political Violence and Change (IPVC) Research Cluster and the Critical Studies on Terrorism Journal (CST).