Dear all
I want to raise the question of where, if anywhere, Naspir should go from here. In the first few years it had a lot of momentum conference papers, etc) but now it is very quiet. Furthermore, the contrast with the APSA Caucus for a New Political Science is significant: it has its own journal, awards, numerous panels at the APSA annual convention and strong links to activism outside academia: see
http://www.apsanet.org/~new/. We have the website
http://www.naspir.net. Members can upload and publish content on the site, site pages and items posted to the forums
http://www.naspir.net/component/option,com_fireboard/Itemid,17/ get about 300 hits and it has 216 registered members. However, I have found the website platform (Joomla) to be unwieldy (it is very time-consuming to publish web-pages) and the few members who have tried to post material have found it similarly off-putting. I pay a small fee each year (£50) for the webhosting, in the past assisted by voluntary contributions from other members.
We have a working group within the British International Studies Association. See:
http://www.bisa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=50&Itemid=68. We used to have lots of papers at the annual conference plus a working group meeting (recently combined with that of the Critical Terrorism Studies working group) but nothing in the last few years. It does not have formal membership: its members are whoever participates in its activities.
We have a yahoo group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/naspir/. It has 428 members but the average number of posts per month has fallen from about 40 per month for first five years to under 10 per month in the last year. This forum facility is unnecessary as naspir.net has a much better forum facility.
My recommendations are as follows
1. I cease to be Naspir convenor, thus leaving it with no positions formally occupied.
2. I cease to pay the £50 annual webhosting fee for naspir.net and so the website will cease to be .
3. I write to BISA to say that the working group has been wound up.
4. I shut down the yahoo group.
Naspir members are channelling their excellent work through other groups and institutions, and the fact that they are still doing that work is the main thing.
