Spotlight On…the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute
This week we hear from Professor Bertrand Taithe and Isabelle Schlapfer who tell us about HCRI, and the exciting launch of The Journal of Humanitarian Affairs.
Please can you tell us a little about your role at HCRI?
Bertrand: I am the executive director of HCRI, we founded the institute 10 years ago and I have been leading it for most of that time.
Isabelle: I am a PhD researcher at HCRI studying how businesses impact on the idea of humanitarian aid; and managing editor of the Journal of Humanitarian Affairs.
You’re currently planning a major event to launch The Journal of Humanitarian Affairs. What can you tell us about the journal, and HCRI’s part in it?
Bertrand: The journal is a coproduction with Médecins sans frontières (CRASH) and Save the Children (HAT). It is edited from Manchester by Isabelle Schapfler and brings together a diverse editorial team from HCRI and our NGO partners. The journal is seeking to cross over practice and academia, go beyond the paywall which limits access to research and bring a new critical and rigorous tone to humanitarian affairs. It is an ambitious project based on mutual respect and team spirit.
We are delighted to have a launch event and in particular a lecture by a speaker of the immense reputation of Mark Duffield. This first issue is provocative and straddles academic and practitioner debates. We look forward to welcoming at HCRI NGO workers, humanitarians, students and anyone interested in humanitarian issues today.
Isabelle: The Journal of Humanitarian Affairs is a new open access journal hosted jointly as Bertrand says. With the journal we aim to provide a space for serious and inter-disciplinary academic and practitioner exchanges on pressing issues of international interest. Our journal will challenge contributors and readers to think critically about humanitarian issues that are often approached from reductionist assumptions about what experience and evidence mean.
What are you most looking forward to over the next six months?
Bertrand: There are a number of issues in process. Debates on mass violence, humanitarian aid in the era of neo- liberalism, debates on security, innovation, migration, humanitarianism and gender, discussions of recent humanitarian practices and older precedents. The journal will cross disciplinary boundaries and bring into fruitful conversation International relations specialists, developmentalists, geographers, historians and of course humanitarian practitioners. There is space for the journal to respond to recent events and engage on current debates and that is the most exciting aspect of it.
Isabelle: Our first issue, Humanitarianism and the end of the liberal order, will be released at the beginning of April and marks definitely a first highlight, together with the launching event on 4 April. We have then a series of exciting issues covering timely themes (eg the role of innovation or the meaning of security in humanitarian aid) and I am really looking forward to working on them and seeing how they develop.
Who inspires you most and why?
Our field is one with many very inspiring people - Our plenary speaker at the launch, Mark Duffield of example is a very brilliant intellectual who really changes the way we think about humanitarian aid, further afield there are a multitude of important voices who are inspiring, for instance Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka at the UN is a powerful voice for gender issues. Personally I find many of the folks you meet in the field inspiring - I do not mean humanitarians necessarily, but the people they work with and for. Though we are in a critical space, challenging assumptions and using our social science disciplines, we can still find much to be inspired by in the humanitarian response to all sorts of suffering.
Isabelle: I love working with the editorial team. I find the passion and expertise by each member, and the exchange during our meetings, very stimulating. More generally, Wendy Brown's critical thoughts on neoliberalism definitely shape and inspire my academic work. So does Stephen Hopgood, who contributed an article to our first issue.