Keynote Address: Towards a Different IR? or Towards Different IRs?

In our time, as in all previous eras, politics is experienced and enacted on multiple and sometimes conflicting time scales and tempos. Our intersubjective and multiple senses of time structure not only what we think of as priorities, but our understanding of what is legitimate, responsible, and possible in politics. How should International Relations Theory think about time at this time?

Keynote Speaker
Neta Crawford is Montague Burton Chair in International Relations and also holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College. Her research focuses on war, ethics, normative change, emotions in world politics, and climate change. Neta was elected a member of both the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2023. She received the Distinguished Scholar award from the International Ethics section of the International Studies Association in 2018. She was a co-winner of the 2003 American Political Science Association Jervis and Schroeder Award for best book in International History and Politics for her book Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, Humanitarian Intervention (CUP, 2002). Crawford is a co-founder and co-director of the Costs of War Project, based at Brown University.

Chair
Toni Erskine is Professor of International Politics in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University (ANU) and Associate Fellow of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge University. She is Chief Investigator of the ‘Anticipating the Future of War: AI, Automated Systems, and Resort-to-Force Decision Making’ Research Project, funded by the Australian Government through a grant by Defence. She also serves as Academic Lead for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP)/Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) ‘AI for the Social Good’ Research Project and in this capacity works closely with government departments in Thailand and Bangladesh. She has recently served as Director of the Coral Bell School at the ANU (2018-23) and Editor of International Theory: A Journal of International Politics, Law & Philosophy (2019-23). Her research interests include the impact of new technologies (particularly AI) on organised violence; the moral agency and responsibility of formal organisations in world politics; the ethics of war; the responsibility to protect vulnerable populations from mass atrocity crimes; and the role of joint purposive action and informal coalitions in response to global crises. She is the recipient of the International Studies Association’s 2024-25 Distinguished Scholar Award in International Ethics.

Light refreshments will be served after the event. Registration is essential for this in-person only event.


This Address is held as part of a series celebrating the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Department of International Relations, located within the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at The Australian National University. You can find more information about the Department’s history and the other activities being held to mark the anniversary throughout 2024 here.