Loughborough University London’s Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance have created a series of mini-lectures that discuss the effects of Covid-19 on a national and global scale. The lectures have been distributed to students providing weekly video content that pose pivotal questions and encourage students to consider the implications of a global pandemic on politics and the economy.

Dr Tatevik Mnatsakanyan: Security, Sovereignty and Covid-19

In the firth part of the Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance’s mini-lecture series, Dr Tatevik Mnatsakanyan talks about security, peace and the current Covid-19 pandemic, and offers reflections and connections with her research and teaching.

Dr Mnatsakanyan first highlights some issue areas and trends in the fields of international security, and conflict and peace: impacts of this crisis on the re-eruption or worsening of conflicts, as well as on human vulnerabilities caused by long term structural inequalities. She then reflects on the very unique status of the pandemic, i.e. what it exposes about discourses and practices of “security”, “political violence” and “sovereignty” – conceptually and theoretically, the areas of her research, along with her specific concern with the politics of denial. She briefly explores the paradox of “boundary” thinking; suggests examining multiple and overlapping forms of denial that the politics around Covid-19 is exposing across the globe; and how they call for a re-articulation of the ethos of sovereignty. She finishes by reflecting on the intellectual and policy opportunities: the pandemic allows re-connecting the dots in national and global politics across and traversing a multiplicity of issue areas and problematic, demanding synergistic approaches.

Watch the video

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