Professor Tarak Barkawi's book Soldiers of Empire wins major AHA 2018 prize

Congratulations to Professor Tarak Barkawi who has been awarded the 2018 Paul Birdsall Prize for a major book on European military and strategic history since 1870 from the American Historical Association for his book Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War II (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017). 

The prize will be awarded at the 133 annual meeting of the AHA in January 2019 in Chicago.

More information here.

Gender and bias in the International Relations curriculum: Insights from reading lists

by Kiran Phull, Gokhan Ciflikli and Gustav Meibauer

Following growing academic interest and activism targeting gender bias in university curricula, the authors present the first analysis of female exclusion in a complete International Relations curriculum, across degree levels and disciplinary subfields. The IR curriculum as LSE was used as a dataset. The paper is based on the work of the IR PhD-led Gender & Diversity Project.

Read or download the paper here.

The Summer 2018 edition of IR Spotlight, the Department of International Relations Newsletter is now available

Read or download the newsletter here

Congratulations to our BSc IR Prizewinners for 2017-18 who have just been announced!

The Goodwin Prize
Best examination performance by a second year BSc IR student
Louise Anna Marie Vallee
Honourable mention: Alessia Giombini
 
The Coral Bell Prize
Best degree performance overall by a third year BSc IR student
Meredydd Rix
 
The Philip Noel-Baker Prize
Best dissertation
Fatihahtul Hanan Binti Md Nor
Meredydd Rix
Jenevieve Treadwell
 
The Geoffrey Stern Examination Prize
Best performance by a first-year BSc IR student in the IR100 exam
Niklas McKerrell
Felix Willuweit

Congratulations to our Graduate Teaching Assistants and Teaching Fellows who have been recognised in the LSE Class Teacher Awards 2018 for their very special contribution to teaching at LSE

From the Department of International Relations:

Highly Commended - Jacklyn Majnemer and Sarah Bertrand

Winner - Chris Rossdale

More information

Listen to a 5 part documentary series on BBC Radio 4 on 'How Syria Changed The World' featuring Professor Fawaz Gerges as main contributor

Listen to Fawaz Gerges, professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, Madawi Al-Rasheed, Saudi Arabia expert and visiting professor at the Middle East Centre of the LSE, and Anoush Ehtheshami, professor of International Relations at Durham University and a specialist in Iran.

Edward Stourton and guests examine how the deep sectarian divide in Syria has now become entrenched across the Middle East region as the major faultline.

(5 x 15 min episodes available via BBC iPlayer)

Listen to the episodes on BBC iPlayer

New Assistant Professor of IPE wins Harvard Dissertation Prize

We are pleased to announce that Ranjit Lall, who joins the LSE International Relations Department as Assistant Professor of International Political Economy in July, has been awarded the Harvard Government Department's Robert Noxon Toppan prize for the best political science dissertation for his dissertation "Making International Organizations Work: The Politics of Institutional Performance".

You can read an International Organization article containing a key part of the argument here.

IR PhD student wins RUSI essay prize

Congratulations to IR PhD student Siddarth Kaushal who has won the 2018 RUSI Trent Gascoigne Essay Prize for original writing on contemporary issues of defence and security with his essay entitled 'Positional Warfare: a Paradigm for understanding 21st Century Conflict'.

Read the full essay here

Watch Professor Christopher Coker's lecture at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs

Professor Coker gave a lecture on 'Is Russia on a collision course with the West?' on 9 May 2018.   

Watch the video in full on YouTube

Congratulations to all our Winners, Highly Commended, and Runners-Up in the LSE Student Union Teaching Excellence Awards 2018

We are very pleased that the following members of our Department have been recognised in the Teaching Excellence Awards this year:

Sarah Bertrand
Runner-up, Feedback and Communication

Aaron McKeil
Runner-up, Innovative Teaching

George Lawson
Highly Commended, Innovative Teaching

Gustav Meibauer
Runner-up, Innovative Teaching

Emma Saint
Winner, Inspirational Teaching

Katharine Millar
Highly Commended, Inspirational Teaching

Andrew Delatolla
Runner-up, Sharing Subject Knowledge

Mathias Koenig-Archibugi
Highly Commended, Research Guidance and Support
Highly Commended, Sharing Subject Knowledge

Over 400 members of staff were nominated by students in seven different categories.  The Award Ceremony will take place on 9 May.

Dr Martin J Bayly's first book wins ISA prize 2018

Congratulations to Dr Martin J Bayly, whose first book Taming the Imperial Imagination: Colonial Knowledge, International Relations, and the Anglo-Afghan Encounter, 1808–1878 was awarded the Francesco Guicciardini Prize for best book in historical international relations 2018, awarded by the historical IR section of the International Studies Association.

Paper wins the International Studies Association Best Pre-PhD Paper Award for the Theory Section

Congratulations to Dr Scott Hamilton, one of our recent PhD graduates, who has won the International Studies Association's 'Best Paper' award for the Theory section, 'Pre-PhD' category 2017. He will be presented with his award at the 2018 ISA conference in San Francisco. Read about the award here.

Read his paper: Securing ourselves from ourselves? The paradox of “entanglement” in the Anthropocene

Paper wins the International Studies Association English School Section Outstanding Research Paper Award

Congratulations to Dr Robert Falkner and Professor Barry Buzan. Their paper 'The Emergence of Environmental Stewardship as a Primary Institution of Global International Society', which was first presented at the ISA 2017 conference, has won the ISA English School Section's Outstanding Research Paper in the 'Senior Scholar' category.

The award will be presented at the 2018 ISA Annual Convention in San Francisco in April.

Read the paper here (European Journal of International Relations. 

LSE Politics and International Relations ranked fifth in 2018 world university rankings by subject

LSE Politics and International Relations has been ranked fifth in the QS World University Ranking by Subject 2018 tables for Politics and International Studies.

Scores take into account academic and employer reputation surveys, along with citations per faculty.

See rankings
See methodology and more information

IR Spotlight: the International Relations Department newsletter

The latest edition of the Department's newletter IR Spotlight is now available!

Read the Spring 2018 edition here

Foreign Policy Magazine/TRIP list of best International Relations Schools in the world

Thank you to the 1500 scholars who contributed to the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) project, and who voted the LSE as top UK institution for Masters Programmes for Policy Career in International Relations.

They also voted for LSE in the top 15 PhD Programmes for Academic Career in International Relations.

Foreign Policy's best International Relations Schools in the world

Jens Meierhenrich, Associate Professor of IR, has been appointed co-editor of Cambridge Studies in Law and Society

The venerable book series at Cambridge University Press was founded in 1997.  Cambridge Studies in Law and Society is a hub for leading scholarship in socio-legal studies. Located at the intersection of law, the humanities, and the social sciences, it publishes empirically innovative and theoretically sophisticated work on law's manifestations in everyday life: from discourses to practices, and from institutions to cultures.

Information about the book series here

Professor Tomila Lankina features in March LSE IQ Podcast

Listen to the March episode of the LSE IQ podcast with LSE experts Professor Tomila Lankina of the International Relations Department, Dr Brian Klass and Dr Jonathan Hopkin on the decline in global freedom & what the future holds for democracy.

Listen to the podcast
More information

LSE Research Festival Competition

Congratulations to Alina Epeykina whose photo 'Sleepless in Bali' (of a young girl having a nap during a work day in a tourist shop in Bali) was highly commended for the Beveridge Prize at the LSE Festival research competition.

View the photo

The International Relations Department has two entries! Vote online for your favourite for the Popular Prize by midnight on 21 Feb and come to the Prize-giving Receptions on 21 and 23 Feb.

Alina Epeykina in the Photograph category
Title: Sleepless in Bali
Vote here

Gokhan Ciflikli, Kiran Phull, Gustav Meibauer in the Poster category
Title: Insights from Syllabi: LSE International Relations Gender Project
Vote here

Staff News

Professor Bill Callahan has been quoted extensively in the Times Higher Education on the relationship between China and Western universities.

Read the Times Higher Education here

Professor Chris Alden and his colleagues have written for The Conversation on China and the fall of Mugabe.

Read the The Conversation here

International Affairs Books Podcast: Tarak Barkawi on Soldiers of Empire

In the latest instalment of this new podcast series from Chatham House, George Lawson interviews Tarak Barkawi about his new book Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War II. 

Listen to Chatham House podcast here (30 mins)

Congratulations to Professor Christopher Hughes who has won a 2016-17 LSE Excellence in Education Award

Designed to support the School’s aspiration of creating "a culture where excellence in teaching is valued and rewarded on a level with excellence in research" (LSE Strategy 2020), winners of the Excellence in Education Awards are recommended by LSE Heads of Department who have demonstrated outstanding teaching contribution and educational leadership in their departments.

More information and full list of winners

International Affairs podcast: Banking crises and Politics

In the latest 30-minute podcast from Chatham House, Ben Horton talks to Jeffrey M Chwieroth, Professor of International Relations at LSE, and Andrew Walter, Professor of International Relations, University of Melbourne (and previously part of the LSE IR faculty).

From Brexit in the UK, to the election of Donald Trump in the US and upheaval across the Eurozone, the effects of the 2008-09 financial crisis are still being felt around the world.

Listen to the International Affairs podcast here.

Kim Wall - IR Department alumnus

The Department of International Relations is extremely saddened to learn of the death of Swedish journalist Kim Wall.  Kim studied for the BSc in International Relations in the IR Department and graduated in 2011, before going on to complete a masters degree at Columbia University and becoming a freelance journalist.

Her former Academic Mentor at the LSE, Dr Alex Prichard, remembers her well.  He writes that she was "a really lovely person, as well as an excellent student with ambition and ability, who was determined to pursue a career in journalism". All who knew her praised her dedication to her work, her inquisitiveness and engagement. 

The department sends its deepest sympathies to Kim's family and friends.

Congratulations to Dr Covadonga Meseguer who has been awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship.

This year the British Academy has appointed 47 new Mid-Career Fellows, whose research promote public understanding and engagement in the humanities and social sciences. Mid-Career Fellowships allow academics to focus on a major piece of research and to communicate their work to a wider audience, by obtaining time away from teaching and administration commitments.

Dr Meseguer has been awarded the fellowship for her project: "The Emigrant State". The Fellowship will be taken up from Autumn 2017.

More information
Read more

Highly cited works

Professor Tomila Lankina's article 'Appropriation and Subversion: Precommunist Literacy, Communist Party Saturation, and Postcommunist Democratic Outcomes' (co-written with Alexander Libman and Anastasia Obydenkova) has been highlighted by the World Politics Cambridge Core website as a 'most cited in 2016' work. They are making it available for free download across the 2017 APSA, ECPR and EISA conferences.

Congratulations to Dr Kirsten Ainley whose article 'The Responsibility to Protect and the International Criminal Court: counteracting the crisis' has been highlighted by Oxford Academic (Oxford University Press) International Affairs Journal as a 'highly cited paper' for 2016. Read the article here

Congratulations to Fawaz Gerges!

ISIS: A History by Professor Fawaz A Gerges
Shortlisted for the prestigious Arthur Ross Book Award 2017 from the Council on Foreign Relations.

This annual award recognises books that make an outstanding contribution to the understanding of foreign policy or international relations.

Read more

Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War Two

Watch Dr. Tarak Barkawi talk about his latest book Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War Two in a fascinating interview here:

Interview with Dr Tarak Barkawi

IR PhD candidate Scott Hamilton receives a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship

Congratulations to Scott Hamilton on receiving a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship 2016-17, for his project 'Rethinking Governance and Circulation: Global Cycles of Carbon, Water, and Radioactive Fallout'.

More information

IR Department PhD students receive bursaries

Congratulations to Ida Danewid & Evelyn Pauls on receiving prestigious LSE Partnership PhD Mobility Bursaries to study abroad.

Ida Danewid, supervised by Mark Hoffman and Kirsten Ainley, has a bursary to go to the University of California, Berkeley. She will work with decolonial theorist Ramón Grosfoguel to further her research on solidarity, the global colour line and connected histories.

Evelyn Pauls, who is supervised by Kirsten Ainley, has a bursary to go to the National University of Singapore. She will work with Professor Aung-Thwin, a leading expert on Burmese history, to refine her work on the influence of international activism on states’ child recruitment practices, in particular in Myanmar.

Partnership PhD mobility bursaries

Staff news

Dr. Stephen Woolcock  gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament's Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Relations' Committee on international trade after Brexit. Click here to watch the debate.

Dr. Tomila Lankina discussed Russia's state of the art media strategy in a new study, arguing that media monitoring can shed light on the Kremlin's opaque decision-making processes. Read full article.

Professor Barry Buzan and Dr George Lawson's book The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations has been awarded the ISA's Francesco Guicciardini Prize for Best Book in Historical International Relations 2017.

Dr. Martin Hearson, LSE IR expert on tax treaties, was quoted in the Financial Times on Mauritius investment.

Dr. Kirsten Ainley reviews Joe Hoover's book 'Reconstructing Human Rights'.

Professor Peter Trubowitz talks about the US Presidential Election in Newsweek and Chatham House.  He also writes regularly for the LSE US Centre blog.

Dr. Martin Bayly gave an interview to Research Professional magazine in September on his British Academy Award.