The program includes intensive training over four days and will conclude with a half-day conference where participants can present work-in-progress to peers and faculty.

The course is designed to support rigorous, ethical research in challenging environments while also building professional networks among scholars working on conflict and political violence.

ARC invites PhD students and early-career researchers in Political Science and related fields who are planning fieldwork in fragile and violence-affected contexts to apply.

Educational Programs — ARC

Applications are still open for the Advancing Research on Conflict Field Research Mini-Course, taking place at All Souls College, University of Oxford, 13–16 September 2026.

Application deadline: 30 April 2026

Details and application instructions: advancingconflictresearch.com/summer-program

Please join us!

So, for the next few weeks, I'll be hopping around North America with @sritholtz.bsky.social to talk about our book, The Way Out. First up, we're speaking at Swarthmore's Department of Peace and Conflict Studies with some wonderful students.

Congratulations to Sam Ritholtz and Rebecca Buxton on the publication of their book 'The Way Out - Justice in the Queer Search for Refuge'. 🥳

Thank you, Patricia!

A huge thanks as well to the colleagues whose work so inspired us in our writing!!! @ucpress.bsky.social @jfcrisp.bsky.social @profccostello.bsky.social @serenaparekh.bsky.social @kwpolphil.bsky.social @whitproject.bsky.social @paisleycurrah.com @jamiejhagen.bsky.social @alexanderbetts.bsky.social

A final thank you to my dear friend and co-author @rebeccabuxton.bsky.social. It's been one of the greatest pleasures of my career to work with you and witness your brilliance up close. I couldn't imagine doing this project for the past 6 years with anyone else!

The photograph on the front of the book is of a flower trapped in ice, taken by the incredibly talented Carlos Saavedra as part of his series 'Limipia' on the trans community in Colombia. You can follow more of his work here: www.instagram.com/carlosaavedr...

We began writing the book with some hope for a better and more inclusive refugee regime, and ended feeling as though we were picking up the pieces. Nevertheless, the book argues against a "damage control" approach. Instead, we must protect our wins and demand more.

This means that considering LGBTQ experiences of displacement is not an "optional extra" for debates on what justice requires (as it is so often treated). Nor can we adopt an "add and stir" approach. Instead, their inclusion reshapes our thinking about the nature and scope of refugee protection.

We argue not only that LGBTQ people experiencing displacement must be better included in our refugee protection systems, but that their lives fundamentally challenge many central concepts that we employ in these debates, particularly in how we conceptualize the harms that drive their displacement.

The book examines the experiences of queer and trans displaced people across the world, asking how their lives and actions challenge the political theory of refuge. In doing so, we follow an imagined journey through home, persecution, flight, assessment, containment, reunion, and sanctuary.

The Way Out by Rebecca Buxton, Samuel Ritholtz - Paper Scholarship is a powerful tool for changing how people think, plan, and govern. By giving voice to bright minds and bold ideas, we seek to foster understanding and drive progressive change.

It's officially publication day for our book, The Way Out. It's been a long road. Rebecca and I started working together in 2019, and it's fair to say that the context shifted under our feet as we wrote and thought. Get the text 30% off with code UCPSAVE30 at www.ucpress.edu/books/the-wa...

BISA logo on a rainbow light background, the words Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize, nominate now, Deadline 3 February

PhD supervisors, theses examiners and Heads of Departments & Schools get nominating today for the Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize! 🎉

Awarded annually for the best doctoral thesis in International Studies 🌟

Nominate today before 3 Feb 👉 https://ow.ly/AWo250XW69X

Sam Ritholtz

We argue that these pieces constitute materialities of dissent that center intimate domestic items as objects of political critique, conceptualizing artistic production and its associated material intimate practice in domestic spaces as crucial sites of meaning and politics in Latin America.

Considering Lucila Quieto’s Filiación (2013) and Doris Salcedo’s untitled sculpture (1992), we analyze how their artistic practices corrupt the intimate material of domestic life to display the fragments left after enforced disappearance, thereby confronting the stigma placed on grieving families.

Transformative aesthetics after war: Grief, repair, and feminist resistance to political violence in the works of Lucila Quieto and Doris Salcedo - Anna Corrigan, Samuel Ritholtz, 2025 Art can transform narratives of trauma by centring the experiences of victims and survivors in public consciousness. It is with this reparative potential that a...

To wrap up the year, I am happy to share a new article, written with Anna Corrigan, in Security Dialogue.

Using political theory and cultural studies, we present a theory of transformative aesthetics to show how art reshapes political life after violence.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Congratulations!! You should connect with @jzulver.bsky.social!!

Some months ago at the La Terturalia Museum in Cali, I felt the responsibility to get a paper published that contributes to our understanding of what happens when women activists get killed.

Ayyy felicitaciones!!!

For those interested, the report can be found here: docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/59/43

LGBT people who have been forcibly displaced face discrimination twice over | HRC59 YouTube video by UN Human Rights Council

It was a real privilege for me to be in Geneva for the launch of the @iesogi.bsky.social report on LGBTIQ people in situations of displacement at the UN HRC.

I was thrilled to contribute to the report and support the work of the mandate.

See the presentation here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDnl...

We argue that the experiences of queer & trans refugees reveal the cracks in our contemporary migration management systems, as well as how things could be otherwise. The book, therefore, offers new conceptual tools for thinking of marginalized groups as central to our work.

The book follows an imagined journey through displacement (home, persecution, flight, assessment, containment, reunion, and sanctuary) to demonstrate the limits of our current approaches to displacement justice when we consider LGBTIQ displacement as a marginal issue.

The Way Out by Rebecca Buxton, Samuel Ritholtz - Paper Scholarship is a powerful tool for changing how people think, plan, and govern. By giving voice to bright minds and bold ideas, we seek to foster understanding and drive progressive change.

My new book, The Way Out, is available for pre-order!

Written with my co-author @rebeccabuxton.bsky.social, we ask what justice requires for LGBTIQ refugees by centering the lives of queer & trans people experiencing displacement in the political theory of refuge.

ucpress.edu/books/the-wa...

My new book, The Way Out, is now available for pre-order!

Written with my co-author Samuel Ritholtz, we ask what justice requires for LGBTQ refugees by centring the lives of queer and trans people experiencing displacement in the political theory of refuge.

www.ucpress.edu/books/the-wa...