Ida Roland Birkvad (she/her) is a Fellow in Political Theory in the Department of International Relations at LSE. Her research engages with questions related to international political theory, histories of imperialism, and non-Western agency in International Relations.
Ida is currently developing a monograph based on her 2022 PhD thesis: The Aryan Other: A Conceptual History of Connection. The monograph considers Aryanism’s trajectories in the time of British imperialism in the Indian subcontinent. Contrary to its popular understandings as an endogenous European notion of white supremacy, the monograph rather understands Aryanism as an inter-elite political concept produced through sustained and heterogeneous interactions between European imperial and Hindu Indian elites.
More broadly, Ida has been engaged in interdisciplinary explorations related to critical strands of International Relations. Inspired by intellectual and political traditions such as South Asian anti-caste critique, the emerging field of trans theory, and the analytical lens of the occult, she is interested in interrogating how the discipline theorises and historicises non-Western agency, as well as how it can better ground its theorisation of the international in its concrete social and historical context.
Ida conducted her PhD research in the School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL), where she was supervised by Professor Kimberly Hutchings. Her PhD was supported by the Leverhulme Trust. She has taught at the LSE, QMUL, SOAS, and the University of Oslo and has previously worked at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), focusing on projects related to migration, international security, and minority politics.
Not available to supervise MPhil/PhD students.