The Future of Doing IR Differently

Department of International Relations 75th Anniversary Public Lecture Series

The field of International Relations (IR) has constructed numerous windows on the world as it is today and as it was in the past. Rarely has IR prioritized research that considers where the field might be or should be looking to carve new spaces for its future. Recent bold and heady research innovations challenge IR to ask a series of fundamental questions about itself: what qualifies as a proper topic within the field’s remit? Where is the field’s salient subject matter located? Who has been outside field purview and must be brought into IR research? Importantly, how to conduct research in a future-oriented field? In this talk I consider some of the changes of foci, methodology and research design that are commanding attention in an expanding and emboldened IR of differences.

About the speaker
Christine Sylvester PhD, Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, and Professorial Affiliate of the School of Global Studies Gothenburg University. She has seven single-authored books, three collections of edited works, and one five-volume work showcasing key works in Feminist IR. She also has an extensive archive of journal articles on feminist IR; critical development studies; critical IR theory; Zimbabwean politics; art, museums and international relations; and critical war studies. Her latest research is on the politics of memorializing international war and peace and features in Curating and Re-Curating the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2019) and “Making Memorials to the Future,” in Global Studies Quarterly (2023). She has held the Swedish Research Council’s Kerstin Hesselgren Professorship, was awarded an honorary doctorate in social science from Lund University (Sweden), and named one of Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations, (Griffiths, Roach, Solomon, eds. Routledge, 2009). She is currently editor of the Routledge book series War, Politics, Experience and is working on a co-authored book with two American combat veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, tentatively titled ‘War in Three Voices’.


About the chair
Dr Sian Troath, Department of International Relations at the ANU Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs.

This Public Lecture 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.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please contact bell.marketing@anu.edu.au