Dr Paul Kirby is an Associate Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security, and a Co-Director of the UKRI GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub.

Paul is currently engaged in three overlapping research projects: a first on the politics of the Women, Peace and Security agenda, especially as it is conceived and practiced by states in the global north; a second on the history of feminist reformulations of foreign policy and statecraft; and a third on the emerging governance of masculinity in global politics, as in efforts to reform or abolish ‘problematic’, ‘toxic’ or ‘hyper-’ masculinity. He has also worked on feminist explanations for wartime sexual violence and occasionally on pop cultural politics and open access. 

Recent publications include New Directions in Women, Peace and Security (Bristol University Press, 2020, co-edited with Soumita Basu and Laura Shepherd); ‘Sexual Violence in the Border Zone’, on the limits of the European Union’s gender action in Libya; and a new analysis of eighteen years of the Women, Peace and Security ecosystem, co-authored with Laura Shepherd. Also with Laura Shepherd and under contract with Columbia University Press is a book on the growth and fracturing of the field, titled Governing the Feminist Peace: Vitality and Failure in the Women, Peace and Security Agenda.

Paul has provided evidence to Parliamentary committees on WPS and open access issues and written on these topics for Foreign Policy, wonkHE, e-IR and the Oxford University Press blog, as well as on LSE’s own sites. Before joining the Gender, Justice and Security Hub, Paul was Senior Lecturer in International Security at the University of Sussex. He has authored the gender chapter in the Baylis, Smith and Owens textbook The Globalization of World Politics for the last three editions and been a co-editor of European Journal of International Relations (2014-2015) and Millennium: Journal of International Studies for Volume 39 (2010-2011) as well as special issues of International Feminist Journal of Politics (2012) and International Affairs (2016). With Laura Shepherd, he was previously co-editor of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security’s working paper series.

Selected Publications: 

• (with Laura J. Shepherd) ‘Women, Peace and Security: Mapping the (Re)Production of a Policy Ecosystem’, Journal of Global Security Studies, forthcoming 2020. See here. 
  
  
• ‘Sexual Violence in the Border Zone: The European Union, the Women, Peace and Security Agenda and Carceral Humanitarianism in Libya’, International Affairs, 96 (5) (2020): 1209-1226. See here.
  
  
• (co-edited with Soumita Basu and Laura Shepherd) New Directions in Women, Peace and Security (Bristol University Press, 2020), including the co-authored and open access chapter ‘Women, Peace and Security: A Critical Cartography'. See here.
  
  
• ‘The Body Weaponized: War, Sexual Violence and the Uncanny’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 51, No. 2-3, 2020. See here.
  
  
• ‘Gender’, in John Baylis, Steve Smith and Patricia Owens (eds.) The Globalisation of World Politics (Oxford University Press, 8th edition, 2019). See here.
  
  
• ‘Homo Interruptus’, in Marysia Zalewski and Paula Drummond (eds.) Sexual Violence Against Men in Global Politics (Routledge, 2018).
  
  
• ‘Political Speech in Fantastical Worlds’, International Studies Review, Vol. 19, No. 4, 2017. See here.
  
  
• (with Laura J. Shepherd) ‘The Futures Past of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda’, International Affairs, Vol. 92, No. 2, 2016. See here.
  
  
• ‘Acting Time; Or, The Abolitionist and the Feminist’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2015. See here.
  
  
• 'Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict: The Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative and Its Critics', International Affairs, Vol. 91, No. 3, 2015. See here.
  
  
• 'How is Rape a Weapon of War? Feminist International Relations, Modes of Critical Explanation and the Study of Wartime Sexual Violence', European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 19, No. 4, 2013. See here.
  
  
• 'Refusing To Be A Man? Men's Responsibility for War Rape and the Problem of Social Structures in Feminist and Gender Theory', Men and Masculinities, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2013. See here.
  
  
• (with Marsha Henry) 'Rethinking Masculinity and Practices of Violence in Conflict Settings', International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol. 14, No. 4, 2012. See here.