Two Talks by Dr Sara Silvestri at CASAW-Edinburgh
Thursday 17 February 2011
University of Edinburgh
19 George Square, Room G/2
CASAW is pleased to announce the following 2 talks by Dr Sara Silvestri (Senior Lecturer in Religion & International Politics, City University London and Head, Global Justice programme, VHI, Cambridge University) on 17 February:
“The Impact of Counter-Terrorism on Muslim and Irish Communities in England since the Era of the ‘Troubles’ in the 1970s to the post-2005 ‘Prevent’ Context”
at 16.15
AND
“From political opposition to lobbying group: the Muslim Brothers in Brussels”
at 17.30
***
Sara Silvestri is Senior Lecturer in International Politics. She joined the department in September 2006, after completing her PhD and ESRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge and teaching at the University of Bristol. Sara teaches courses focused on Islamism and religion in global politics, and the EU, and heads the PhD programme. She also directs the Global Justice programme at the VHI – a Cambridge institution devoted to the study of faith in contemporary society, collaborates with POLIS, and with the Cambridge Muslim College. Sara is a co-convenor of the BISA working group on Religion, Security and IR and, because of her expertise, has been involved in policy-related work.
***
The first work on which she will present is co-authored by Sara Silvestri, Mary Hickman, Lyn Thomas and Henri Nickels. This work provides a critical analysis of continuities and variations in the understanding of terrorism and of national security in recent British history. It does so by engaging with the process whereby counter-terrorism policies have been formulated, debated, and implemented by the establishment and by observing how specific religious and ethnic identities and are conflated with or understood as in opposition to national identity and security threats, thus being identified as ‘suspect’, at different moments in time. Empirically, the article draws on the policy component of a multi-layered and historically informed comparative research about the representation or Irish and Muslim communities and the impact of counter-terrorism on both communities in England since the era of the ‘Troubles’ in the 1970s to the post 2005 ‘Prevent’ context.
The second paper she will be presenting examines the mobilisation of the Muslim Brothers in the setting of the EU institutions. The analysis is conducted by highlighting a the type of organisations and of activities that are run, and the ideological traits that transpire from this mobilisation. Some reflections are proposed on the implications that this has for the EU official position in relation to religion more broadly and dialogue with Islamists more specifically.
