On Friday 25 May and Saturday 26 May, CIS will host a major international conference entitled Protracted conflicts in the former Soviet Union - Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transnistria - Understanding the past, navigating the present, mapping the future.

The conference is being organised with a grant awarded to Dr Donnacha O Beachain from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) and the Department of Foreign Affairs Conflict Resolution Unit. It takes place during Ireland's chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) this year.

The presenters will introduce the cases of their state (be it recognised or secessionist) and have an opportunity to engage with the other presenters and conference participants - academics, diplomats, students, EU and OSCE officials, civil servants and representatives of international organisations. The conference is designed to provide optimal conditions for participants not only to develop practical proposals on how best to ameliorate the current impasses in the conflict regions but to introduce the study of these conflicts to an Irish audience.

The event will take place at the Helix, Dublin City University, 09.00-18.00 on Friday and 09.30 to 18.00 on Saturday. All are welcome. RSVP to: email Donnacha O Beachain or telephone him at 085-7060933.

On Thursday 26 April 2012, Professor Gary Murphy's research research into international lobbying regulations was presented to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the British House of Commons.

The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee is charged with reviewing issues surrounding the introduction of a lobbyist register in the UK. The issue is of considerable public interest, given potential forthcoming legislation and the high profile Levenson Enquiry currently ongoing in London. In their submission, they spoke to the Committee about their research findings which offer a means for benchmarking potential regulatory regimes. The session was broadcast live on the House of Commons television channel and an audio recording is available here.

The research undertaken by Professor Murphy in collaboration with colleagues at Trinity College Dublin and Dublin Institute of Technology is funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS). It has appeared internationally in their book Regulating Lobbying: A Global Comparison (Manchester University Press, 2010) which has now been translated into Russian. On previous occasions they have presented their findings on lobbying regulations internationally to members of parliament in the Czech Republic and to members of the Oireachtas in Ireland.

Congratulations to Dean John Doyle and Dr. Donnacha O Beachain who are part of a Marie Curie consortium which has just been awarded an EU grant of €188,000, led by Tallinn University in Estonia and involving partners in Ireland (DCU), Russia, Georgia, India and Turkey.

TRANSFOR-Transition versus Transformation: comparing paths to democratic change in the former USSR using case study based evidence from civil society, international aid and domestic politics, aims to study the interaction between civil society and domestic political forces and international actors operating at different levels of the state in the former Soviet space in order to explore three questions:

1) What are the limits of international influence in democracy promotion strategies that target civil society as the main actor in the socio-political transition of a country?

2) What are the factors that allow civil society to play a role in effective pluralisation and democratization of a country?

3) Is there any mechanism diffusing those factors across regions and continents and what are the reasons for a successful exportation of factors and strategies? Conversely what factors are most important in limiting this diffusion?

CIS colleagues were the only social scientists to obtain funding (€26,000) under the Government of India India-Ireland Cooperative ScienceProgramme 2011, which is also being financially supported by DCU's Office of the Vice-President for Research. The purpose of the funding scheme is to promote and encourage bilateral scientific collaboration between Indian and Irish scientists. The financing is being used to further the project 'Onto-X: An Inter-Disciplinary Approach Towards Building an Ontology for Violent Online Political Extremism,' which is being undertaken jointly with Computer Science colleagues from Indraprastha Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIIT-D), India. Mr. Prateek Dewan, a PhD student from IIIT-D, is currently on a three month-long research visit at CIS, as part of the project. Mr. Dewan's PhD supervisor, Dr. Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, will spend the month of July at CIS, also working on Onto-X. CIS' Dr. Maura Conway is, together with Dr. Kumaraguru, joint Principal Investigator on Onto-X; Ms. Lisa McInerney, Dr. Conway's PhD student, is also contributing to the project. Congratulations to all involved.

Dr. Francesco Cavatorta was invited by the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society of the University of Turin (Italy) for two seminars and a public book presentation. On 7th May 2012, Dr. Cavatorta discussed the volumes 'Effect Civil Society' (eds. R. Di Peri and P. Rivetti, 2010) and 'Democratization and Civil Society in the Middle East and Asia' (ed. E. Giunchi, 2011). On 8th May, Francesco discussed the dynamics of the Arab Spring and democratization in the MENA region with PhD and MA students. The other seminar was about 'Publish or Perish and how to get published in international peer-reviewed journals', and it was opened to PhD students and post-doctoral fellows.

Professor Robert Elgie was interviewed for Today FM about the first round of the French presidential election. You can follow his analysis of French politics on Twitter,Facebook, or via his blog.

Dr Donnacha O Beachain was interviewed on RTE Radio 1's Drivetime programme to discuss the continued imprisonment of Ukrainian political leader Yulia Tymoshenko and the implications for EU-Ukraine relations.

Dr. David Doyle has a article co-authored by Nina Wiesehomeir:

Wiesehomeier, Nina & David Doyle. 2012. '(In)equality Preferences and the Left-Right Divide in Latin America: Evidence from public opinion'. Journal of Politics in Latin America. Vol 4 (1)

Their article is available online. The authors quantitatively explore whether citizens with the same ideological identification also share similar and coherent convictions and beliefs that reflect the ideological content of the left-right distinction in Latin America. Their analysis indicates that theoretical conceptions about the roots of, and responsibility for, inequality in society distinguish those who self-identify with the left and those who self-identify with the right.

At the end of April, the paperback edition of the highly successful The Colour Revolutions in the Former Soviet Republics: Successes and Failureswas published by Routledge. Edited by Donnacha O Beachainand Abel Polese (University of Edinburgh) the book focuses on a remarkable phenomenon that swept through the former Soviet Union during the first decade of the 21st century, changing the political, social and cultural landscape. Popularly known as the 'Colour Revolutions', these non-violent protests overthrew autocratic regimes in three post-soviet republics: the Georgian Rose Revolution (2003), the Ukrainian Orange Revolution (2004) and the Kyrgyzstani Tulip Revolution (2005). This book examines the significance of these regime-change processes for the post-soviet world in particular and for global politics in the 21stcentury.

Engaging comprehensively with the former Soviet republics, the contributors to this book ask why there wasn't a revolution in a post-Soviet republic such as Russia, despite apparently favourable conditions. Identifying the conditions for successfulcolour revolutions, this book asks whether there is a revolutionary blueprint that may be exported to other areas around theworld that are under autocratic rule.

Amina Adanan presented her research entitled Universal Jurisdiction in International Law and the Principle of Desuetude on 'A history of extraterritorial jurisdiction in International Law' at the Irish Centre for Human Rights' Annual Doctoral Seminar.

Dawn Walsh presented a paper entitled 'International regulation of ethnic conflict: the independent commission on policing in Northern Ireland' for a conference Multidisiplinary Approaches to Ethnic Conflict at Sabanci University Istanbul 5th of May.

Congratulations to Dr Aoileann Ní Mhurchú (DCU, Graduate 2011) who has just been appointed to a 3 year post at the University of Manchester as a Lecturer in International Politics.