WS: Ammon Cheskin: Producing Russia in Academic Discourse: Institutional, Disciplinary, and Geographical Factors

This work critically investigates how scholars derive and produce knowledge in times of extensive and overwhelming flows of information, utilising a globally important case study - Russia's actions in Ukraine (2014). This focus is essential in understanding how major global events are interpreted and presented by potentially influential actors who influence public opinion and inform government policies. While the expansion of virtual information flows is increasingly studied, to date, there has been insufficient engagement with the impact on scholarship itself, especially the question of how scholars deal with the ever-expanding volumes of information that accompany major news stories. As funding bodies and universities encourage ever-greater dissemination and exchange of knowledge, it is vital to investigate critically how this knowledge is formed in the first instance.

Drawing on a wide, inter-disciplinary range of approaches, I present (and seek feedback on) a complex methodology to examine how, and if, scholars are affected by their institutional, disciplinary, biographical and (politico-)geographical positions as researchers and individuals. Surveying these factors, I also wish to examine how (or if) emotions and affect are interlaced with these key areas, and what part they play in the knowledge-production process.

// Dr. Ammon Cheskin (University of Glasgow)

Suggested Readings:

• Swidler, A. & Arditi, J. (1994) The new sociology of knowledge. Annual Review of Sociology 20: 305-29.

• Omelicheva, M. (2016) Critical geopolitics on Russian foreign policy: uncovering the imagery of Moscow's international relations. 

• International Politics 53(6): 708-26.

• Pile, S. (2010) Emotions and affect in recent human geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35: 5-20.