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Where are the women in international thought? Why have they been excluded from the discipline of IR, and where does this neglect of female scholars come from? In their Leverhulme Project on 'Women and the History of International Thought', Patricia Owens, Katharina Rietzler and Kimberly Hutchings recover the contributions of 'historical women'. In this episode, host Vineet Thakur (University of Leiden) interviews Patricia Owens (University of Oxford) who discusses the absented presence of women's IR history and thinking.

Uneven and Combined Development (UCD) is a social theory of the international. Originating in the writings of Leon Trotsky, most explicitly in the opening chapter of Trotsky's The History of the Russian Revolution (1932), scholars of UCD aim to expand on what Trotsky never fully formulated. First introduced into the discipline of IR at the 1995 Deutscher Memorial Lecture by Prof. Justin Rosenberg (University of Sussex), UCD has gained considerable attention both in IR and Historical Sociology. In this episode Justin Rosenberg is in conversation with Judith Koch (University of Sussex). Among other things, they talk about UCD's contemporary applications...

Political Marxists have produced a variety of compelling contributions in several disciplines, not least in IR. In this episode, Dr Maïa Pal (Brookes University), who is in conversation with Judith Koch (University of Sussex), discusses the foundations of Political Marxism, the advantages of its radical historicist method, as well as its main critiques. Dr Pal's work engages with the relationship between capitalism and law, emphasizing jurisdiction as a key concept of international order. Tune in for a deep dive into Political Marxism and its continuing relevance for the analysis of large-scale societal and (geo)political transformations.

What does it mean to do Area Studies, and what is the relationship between Area Studies and IR? In this podcast, Lindsay Black (Leiden University) explains the research agenda of Area Studies. Area Studies broadens our understanding of how to locate power, uncover inequalities, and re-politicize the effects of globalization. He tells us how area studies approaches open up scope for a more nuanced understanding of the social embeddedness of world politics, as well as of current global conflicts, such as the disentanglement of ethnic groups and state borders through imperialist practices. Tune in to a compelling conversation that stands...

Sankaran Krishna (UH Manoa, Hawaii) is a leading postcolonial scholar in International Relations whose work is concerned with the long-ignored but integral elements of the international system - colonialism, racism, genocide, among others. His work, as he says in this podcast with Vineet Thakur (Leiden University), is influenced by scholars such as Samir Amin, Edward Said and Ashis Nandy. He highlights the inseparable relationship between the racialized violence of colonialism and the emergence of the international system. In this conversation, he discusses key elements of postcolonialism, the depoliticizing abstraction of IR theory and critiques of postcolonial approaches, including their ready...

In the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, geopolitics has assumed greater salience in both public discourse as well as academic discussions. Theoretically, geopolitics is considered integral to Realism in IR. It refers to a particular form of Realism which centers the role of geography and technology in the making of state preferences. Continuing the discussion from our previous episode on realism, our interview guest Stefano Guzzini, Professor at Uppsala University and PUC-Rio de Janeiro and Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, delineates how geopolitics is very specifically 'the militaristic gaze of Realism. To learn more about...

Realism has been one of the most influential theories in the discipline of International Relations. Its critics often label it variously as positivist, state-centric, militaristic, imperialistic, materialistic, immoral and a warmongering theory. In this episode, Stefano Guzzini, Professor at Uppsala University and PUC-Rio de Janeiro and Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, is in conversation with Vineet Thakur (Leiden University). Himself a 'fallen Realist', Prof Guzzini discusses the core ideas, theoretical contributions and indeed misunderstandings related to Realism. He differentiates three different dimensions of Realism: as an ontology of politics, as an explanatory theory of power politics,...

What does a 'practice turn' mean in International Relations? In this episode Ingvild Bode (University of Denmark), Associate Professor of International Relations, and Principal Investigator of an ERC research project on autonomous weapons systems and international norms (AUTONORMS) and host Beste İşleyen (University of Amsterdam) engage in an in-depth conversation about Practice Theory in IR. Although IR scholarship, such as Constructivism, has long emphasised the importance of practices in shaping the world, this episode sheds light on the ways practices present IR scholars with a fruitful concept to engage with the process in which international relations are made. Ingvild Bode’s...

How can we theoretically engage with linear borders as cartographic practice, thereby acknowledging their political dimension and place within projects of colonialism and partition? Kerry Goettlich (University of Reading), winner of the EISA's Best Dissertation Award 2021 for his thesis “From Frontiers to Borders: The Origins and Consequences of Linear Borders in International Politics” (LSE 2019), suggests to examining linear borders by unpacking their historical causes and consequences. In conversation with Catherine Charrett (University of Westminster), Kerry Goettlich elaborates on his account which theorizes modern linear borders as an outcome of ‘survey rationality', and thereby challenges the idea of linear...

In this episode Bahar Rumelili (Koç University, İstanbul) discusses the concept of ontological security (OS) with host Beste İşleyen (University of Amsterdam). By unpacking the notion of ontological security, we learn how OS as a concept relates to, and differs from other critical security concepts within IR scholarship. Arguing that existing critical approaches to security tend to conflate ontological security and physical security, Bahar Rumelili elaborates on the relationship between identity and security, and her work on identity construction through difference.
By drawing on the Hobbesian state of nature and existentialist philosophy, Bahar Rumelili emphasises the constitutive notion of anxiety...