John Morrissey
ZNet (06-06-2020)
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted multiple responses to safeguard life, and the efforts of frontline workers across the globe are a reminder of the empathy and resilience of the human spirit. Throughout history, all societies have shown a capacity for a politics of care, and this has been inspiringly triggered by our current moment of exposure to contagion and mass death. But our vulnerability to the deadly coronavirus also prompts another exposure, one that is vital: the careful illumination of the relational political economic structures of how we became exposed. In this, we must renew efforts to document the rapacious and unsustainable destructiveness of the capitalist web of life, and we must argue convincingly for other ways of living – alternative subjectivities that can secure a healthier, fairer and more sustainable planet.
About Prof. John Morrissey
John has published widely in the areas of geopolitics, imperialism, security and development. His books include Negotiating Colonialism (2003), Spatial Justice and the Irish Crisis (2014), The Long War (2017) and Haven (2020). His research has been supported by various grants, from the British Academy, Clinton Institute for American Studies, ESRC and IRC, and in recent years he has held research fellowships at City University of New York, LUISS University Rome, Virginia Tech, the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford. In addition to his research, John is passionately committed to teaching. At NUI Galway, he is the Programme Director of the MA in Environment, Society and Development, a leading Masters programme attracting international students from all over the world. The programme has won a number of accolades for its civic engagement element, which involves students working on the ground with the UN in Bosnia. John won the President's Award for Teaching Excellence at NUI Galway in 2011 and for a second time in 2018, and in 2012 won the NAIRTL Irish National Academy Award for Research and Teaching Excellence.
HAVEN 