In addition to its Annual Workshop, the ISRF also supports smaller events convened by – or in partnership with – ISRF Fellows and associates.

2023

V. Chick and G.C. Harcourt. Lives lived against the stream

Goldsmiths, University of London
12 & 13 May

Organised by Andrew Trigg and Constantinos Repapis

This event celebrates the many and diverse contributions that Victoria Chick (1936-2023) and Geoffrey Colin Harcourt (1931-2021) brought to the economics community over their lives. They were both central pillars of the Keynesian and later Post-Keynesian school of thought from its very beginning, and their contributions defined the scope and outlook that this approach to economics came to represent. This two-day event intends to honour their work and many years of service to the community.

All sessions can be joined online. Please email Dr Constantinos Repapis ([email protected]) if you would like to receive the relevant MS Teams link.

Organised by The Open Political Economy Group, IKD, The Open University and the History and Methodology of Economic Thought Research Group, Goldsmiths, supported by the Independent Social Research Foundation

Participants to include:

  • Stephanie Blankenburg
    Head of the Debt & Development Finance Branch, Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, United Nations
  • Mauro Boianovsky
    Professor of Economics, Universidade de Brasilia
  • Nicole Cerpa Vielma
    Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Economics, University of Leeds 
  • Jennifer Churchill
    Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of the West of England
  • Avi Cohen
    Professor of Economics, York University & University of Toronto
  • Andy Denis
    Fellow Emeritus, Department of Economics, City, University of London
  • Sheila Dow
    Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Stirling
  • José Bruno Fevereiro
    Research Associate, Sheffield University Management School
  • James Forder
    Andrew Graham Fellow and Tutor in Political Economy, Balliol College Oxford
  • Daniela Gabor
    Professor of Economics and Macro-Finance, University of the West of England
  • Jayati Ghosh
    Professor of Economics, UMass Amherst
  • Danielle Guizzo
    Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Bristol
  • Joan Harcourt Counsellor, Therapist and wife of Geoff Harcourt
  • Wendy Harcourt
    Professor of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development, Erasmus University
  • Jesper Jespersen
    Emeritus Professor of Economics, Roskilde University
  • Christian Koutny
    PhD Student in Economics, Kingston University London
  • Heinz Kurz
    Professor of Economics, University of Graz
  • Christina Laskaridis
    Lecturer in Economics, Open University
  • Andres Lazzarini
    Lecturer in Economics, Goldsmiths, University of London
  • Pedro Siqueira Machado
    Lecturer in International Political Economy, City, University of London
  • Maria Cristina Marcuzzo
    Professor of Economics, Sapienza University of Rome
  • Julie Phillips
    Writer and cousin of Victoria Chick
  • Constantinos Repapis
    Lecturer in Economics, Goldsmiths, University of London
  • Tomás Rotta
    Lecturer in Economics, Goldsmiths, University of London
  • Geoff Tily
    Senior Economist, TUC
  • Jan Toporowski
    Professor of Economics and Finance, SOAS, University of London
  • Andrew Trigg
    Professor of Economics, Open University
  • Richard van den Berg
    Associate Professor, Kingston Business School
  • Ariel Wirkierman
    Lecturer in Economics, Goldsmiths, University of London

2022

The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture

Queen Mary, University of London
5pm GMT, 23 November – Register Here

This is a collaborative event jointly hosted with International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) and School of Politics and International Relations (QMUL).

Lisa Hajjar will discuss her new book which traces the fight against the US torture policy in the “war on terror.” This fight was waged by lawyers who used the courts to challenge the government’s gross violations of law. Their victories, though few and far between, forced the government to change the way prisoners were treated and focused attention on state crimes perpetrated in the shadows. If not for these lawyers, US torture would have gone unchallenged because elected officials and the American public, with a few exceptions, did nothing to oppose it. This war in court has been fought to defend the principle that there is no legal right to torture.

Lisa Hajjar is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California – Santa Barbara. Her work focuses on issues relating to law and conflict, including military courts and occupations, torture, targeted killing, war crimes, and human rights. Her publications include Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (University of California Press, 2005) and Torture: A Sociology of Violence and Human Rights (Routledge 2013). Her new book, The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture, is published by the University of California Press. She is a founding co-editor of Jadaliyya and a member of the editorial committee of Middle East Report.

Economics & Semiotics

Goldsmiths, University of London
28 & 29 October – DOWNLOAD FLYER

Part of the Economics &… Workshop Series

This workshop aimed to gather together a broad range of scholars in order to address issues relating to the intersection of economics and semiotics. Our purpose was to open up a new space for reflection on economics and the economy through the use of tools and concepts developed in semiotics. Lately there has been a rekindling of interest in the way semiotics relate to economics and, more precisely, in discovering the way economics and semiotics share common concepts or means in order to interpret social and cultural activity. This workshop aimed to investigate how a dialogue between semiotics and economics is capable of throwing new light into a better understanding of today’s changing world.

More specifically, despite the fact that economists use empirical evidence in the form of numerical data to answer theory and policy questions, what most economists do not customarily reflect on is the fact that they pre-impose interpretation patterns and broad conceptual frameworks to form policy or theory related questions at the very start of any policy or research process. Semiotics is the study of signs within which processes of interpretation play key-roles in coding and decoding meanings. In both fields, interpretation as a social process is a central element that leads to recognised theoretical results, estimates, and conclusions. From economic concepts to semiotic value(s), everything in our world can be regarded as a sign capable of meaning, through the process of interpretation. How, then, do we proceed from semantics to pragmatics, from theory to practise and vice versa? What is the nature of the relation between interpretation, results and reality? How can we define the hermeneutics of economic discourse and the economy behind semiotic interpretations both in our abstractions and in practice? The application of the semiotics approach to the economics discourse is vital in helping us unpack the various meanings of loaded terms in common use in economics.

The workshop was organised around key concepts that have special weight both in semiotics and in economics, these are: value – discourse – narrative – sign – framework. The workshop focused on an effort to understand what we mean with these and related concepts. It also aimed to start a broad discussion not only on how terms/constructs are used in the economics discourse, but also on the performative relationship between discourse and reality. The sessions intended to use this discussion as a foundation for a tentative understanding of the nature of the economy – and the type of ontological statements that well-grounded economic analysis may develop. This allowed participants to speculate on future avenues of research that build on a dialogic relationship between economics and semiotics, and therefore attempt to re-orient the way discourse construction is performed in economics.

Participants included:

  • Louise Braddock
    Researcher in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
  • Ivano Cardinale
    Reader in Economics, Goldsmiths, University of London
  • Maria Giulia Dondero
    Research Director of the National Belgian Fund for Scientific Research
  • Jose Fevereiro
    Post-Doctoral Researcher in Economics, Open University
  • Claudia Jefferies
    Senior Lecturer in Economics, City, University of London
  • Foteini Lika
    Researcher, School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University
  • Nuno Martins
    Professor of Economic Thought, Universidade Católica Portuguesa
  • Stratos Myrogiannis
    Adjunct Lecturer, School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University
  • Giorgos Politis
    Associate Professor in Social Philosophy, University of Athens
  • Stephen Pratten
    Professor in Economics and Philosophy, King’s College London
  • Constantinos Repapis
    Lecturer in Economics, Goldsmiths, University of London
  • Roberto Scazzieri
    Professor of Economic Analysis, University of Bologna
  • Dimitris Sotiropoulos
    Senior Lecturer in Finance, Open University
  • Nicholas J. Theocarakis
    Professor of Economics, University of Athens
  • Ragupathy Venkatachalam
    Head of Institute of Management Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London
  • Louise Villeneuve
    Doctoral Researcher in Economics, Goldsmiths, University of London
  • James Wible
    Professor of Economics, University of New Hampshire