Pat James, Emeritus Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California, will be conducting a workshop on campus focused on The Visualizing International Relations Project (VIRP). The workshop will teach participants a method that Dr. James developed over the course of the last several years for creating visualizations of an argument as conveyed in words for either a combination of articles or an individual publication. The systemist method creates what resemble traditional ‘box and arrow’ diagrams, but with rules that emphasize rigor and reproducibility. The overall purpose is to facilitate a productive debate as well as to enhance comprehension of the vast and rapidly expanding knowledge base in academia. The focus of the project is on developing a pragmatic understanding of academic literature– in line with a realization that visual rather than strictly verbal communication is essential to understanding literature that in some cases has accumulated over centuries of work.
You can learn more about the VIRP by visiting the archive (https://visualinternationalrelationsproject.com) which contains over 1000 diagrams. While the main substantive focus of the project is international relations, this technique can be used for any academic field – not just International Politics.
Those who are interested should send a short statement of interest to Allison Quatrini (quatrial@eckerd.edu) or David Lektzian (david.lektzian@ttu.edu). For more information about the workshop itself, contact Patrick James at patrickj@usc.edu. To learn more about VIRP and explore example diagrams, visit the website at https://visualinternationalrelationsproject.com/ or you can read more about the project in the first three of chapters of Dr. James' book titled "Systemist International Relations," available from the publisher at https://titles.cognella.com/systemist-international-relations-9781793547224.
