During the 1960s, International Relations at Sussex was headed by Martin Wight - perhaps the most famous of all British international theorists. Research in the Department today continues and extends Wight's philosophical and historical orientations, while adding a distinctive critical edge too. Current work in this area covers such themes as
- the historical and philosophical critique of liberal international perspectives
- the relevance of continental philosophy and social theory for international thought, including the thought of Karl Marx, Max Weber, Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt and Michel Foucault
- culture, religion, subjectivity and gender as dimensions of international power
- explorations in the rapidly expanding genres of World History and Civilisational Encounters
- the development of new historical materialist and historical sociological approaches for international studies
Two members of this research cluster have been awarded prizes for works on historical sociology and International Relations (The Empire of Civil Society and The Myth of 1648). The national forum for that field (the BISA Working Group on Historical Sociology and IR) is co-convened from within the Department, and more of the papers contributed to its Workshops have come from Sussex than from any other institution. (See www.historical-sociology.org)
A new research centre, the Centre for Advanced International Theory encourages innovative theoretical research in International Relations from both within and outside the discipline.
Members of the Critical and Historical International Theory Research Cluster include:
Justin Rosenberg joined the Department in 1998, having previously taught at the London School of Economics. Following his original Marxian analysis of the sovereign states-system (The Empire of Civil Society 1994) he has moved on - first to provide an influential theoretical and historical critique of globalisation theory (The Follies of Globalisation Theory 2001), and more recently to initiate a major reconstruction of the theory of 'uneven and combined development' as an alternative paradigm for international theory. His sequel to Follies ('Globalization Theory: a Post Mortem' 2005) was the subject of a debate in International Politics. And his work on 'uneven and combined development' appears in New Left Review, International Politics, The European Journal of International Relations, and the Cambridge Review of International Affairs. Rosenberg's books have been translated into Spanish, Japanese and Chinese. He was Chair of the Deutscher Prize Committee (1997-2003). He currently co-convenes the BISA Working Group on 'Historical Sociology and IR', and is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Historical Materialism.
Following her earlier study of the origins of the 'state of nature' in international theory (The Cultural Construction of International Relations, 2000), Beate Jahn is currently engaged on a major historical analysis of the role of liberalism in international thought and practice. She has published a radical critique of the Democratic Peace thesis in International Organization (2005), as well as a study of the interrelated domestic and international thought of John Stuart Mill in Review of International Studies (2005). More recently, she has contributed a two-part leading article in the opening issues of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding (2007), analyzing the liberal foundations of, and continuities between, present-day and early Cold War US foreign policy. Alongside this critical analysis of liberalism, she has also embarked upon a more general reconsideration of the role of classical thought in international theory, resulting in an edited volume on Classical Theory in International Relations (Cambridge University Press 2006). She is a member of the editorial board of ECPR Press, and of the ECPR thesis prize panel. Jahn is also author of Liberal internationalism: theory, history, practice. (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2013); Rethinking democracy promotion in Review of International Studies, 38 (4). 2012, pp. 685-705; and Critique in a time of liberal world order in Journal of International Relations and Development, 15, 2012. pp. 145-157.
Benno Teschke joined the department in 2003, after previous positions as an Andrew Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History, UCLA and the University of Wales, Swansea. His award-winning Myth of 1648 (reviewed in TLS) constitutes a landmark study in the literature and presents a direct critique of the 'Westphalian Paradigm' in IR. Currently, he is extending his historical reconstruction of the co-development of capitalism and geopolitics with a specific focus on the Prusso-German modernisation process. His work has been translated into Japanese, German and Spanish. In 2004, he delivered the Deutscher Memorial Lecture at Birkbeck College, subsequently published in Historical Materialism and in Prokla: Zeitschrift für Kritische Sozialwissenschaft ( Berlin). In 2006 International Politics published a symposium on The Myth of 1648. Teschke gained major research scholarships from the ESRC and Nuffield, was a consultant for the Open University, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for International Politics, Nehru University, New Delhi. In 2005 he co-organised with Samuel Knafo a British Academy-funded international conference on the 'Social History of IR', and is a member of the editorial advisory boards of Millennium and Das Argument ( Berlin). Teschke has published widely in leading IR and Social Science journals, including IO, EJIR, Millennium, International Politics, NLR, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Historical Materialism and Prokla.
More recently, BT has critically explored the international political and legal thought of Carl Schmitt and contributed to ongoing debates on his contemporary relevance in IR, Historical Sociology, and Political and Social Theory. He is currently preparing a research monograph on the subject/thinker.
Louiza Odysseos's research interests lie at the interstices of international theory and continental philosophy with special emphasis on ethics, critical theory and post-structuralist thought. Her book, the first book-length treatment of the work of Martin Heidegger in IR, The Subject of Coexistence: Otherness in International Relations ( Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007) pioneered a philosophical critique of the subjectivist ontology of International Relations, interrogating the much neglected question of coexistence. Following this, she organised with Fabio Petito, a project highlighting the international political thought of Carl Schmitt, which has led to both a special issue on the interconnections between the international law and international theory of Carl Schmitt in the Leiden Journal of International Law and also an edited volume on The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order (London: Routledge, 2007). She has since then embarked on a critical examination of liberal cosmopolitan perspectives of a post-Westphalian era, mapping their ethical, political and military manifestations, as well as emergent forms of resistance, in global politics. For a full list of projects, publications and work in progress, see her personal website: http://www.louizaodysseos.org.uk/
Kamran Matin joined the department in 2007. Deploying an internationally augmented historical materialism, he develops a new interpretation of Iran's modern political history that challenges conventional accounts of the developmental specificities of Iran, as well as the Middle East more generally. In a 2007 EJIR (13:3) article he develops the concept of 'amalgamated state-formations' which theoretically reorients the problematique of 'Asiatic state'. In a book-chapter published by Pluto (2006) he recasts Iran's 1906 Constitutional Revolution- and the wider question of democratic change in pre-modern social-formations- as an essentially inter-national process that is irreducible to, and inexplicable in terms of, internal socio-political and economic dynamics. His current research seeks to recast the Iranian variety of the ideology of 'political Islam' as a modern discursive palimpsest: a specific mediation of capitalist modernity via transmutative synthesis of western political philosophies and Shi'i religio-political repertoire that reconstitutes both in pursuit of radical social change.
Fabio Petito's research interests lie at the intersection of International Relations and Political Theory and is characterized by a theoretical interest in the interactions between the (so-called) western and non-western worlds in the light of the ideas of dialogue of civilizations, cross-cultural encounters and multiculturalism. As editor of Millennium, he designed the special issue on 'Religion in IR' which then developed into the volume Religion in International Relations: The Return from Exile (Palgrave, 2003; Italian translation, 2006), today regarded as a reference text in this growing field of research. Together with Louiza Odysseos, he has contributed to introduce the neglected international thought of Carl Schmitt to International Relations - see in particular The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, liberal war and the crisis of global order (Routledge, 2007). Currently, he is working on a monograph entitled The International Political Theory of Dialogue of Civilization and on an edited volume entitled Global Empire or Dialogue of Cultures? The Politics of Cultures, Religions and Civilizations in IR (Palgrave, 2009). His main empirical interests lie in the International Relations of the Mediterranean (the Euro-Mediterranean Relationships, Political Islam and Middle East and North Africa politics) with a specific emphasis on how Europe can develop an alternative approach to the world of Islam within and outside of Europe. He maintains also a more policy-oriented interest in Italian Foreign Policy, EU's Foreign Policy and American Grand Strategy.
Cynthia Weber joined the Department in 2010, having previously taught at universities in the US and the UK. Her research addresses how hegemonic discourses function, and how they might be resisted and/or reconstructed by historically and theoretically investigating these practices not only through US domestic and foreign policy and in disciplinary IR but also through globalized expressions of hegemony found in popular culture, gender, sexuality, and design. Her early work explored the key IR concept of sovereignty and its relationship to intervention in her book Simulating Sovereignty (Cambridge UP, 1995) and in her BISA Prize winning RIP article ‘Reconsidering Statehood’ (19992). Since then, her work has taken three forms – writing books and article, engaging with critical designers who design material objects and systems as critical questions about contemporary society, and producing documentary films and photographs. Her latest books focus on post-9/11 critiques of US policy (Imagining America at War, Routledge, 2006) and critiques of disciplinary IR (Queer International Relations, under contract with Oxford UP). Her latest engagement with critical design is documented in her guest edited volume of Citizenship Studies on ‘Design and Citizenship’ (2010). And her latest film/photography project ‘I am an American’ chronicles the internal contradictions in liberal expressions of US identity in a post-9/11 context. A selection of this work can be viewed on the Open Democracy website at http://www.youtube.com/user/opendemocracyteam. The entire project will become part of the US September 11 Memorial Museum’s permanent collection. A book based on this project entitled ‘I am an American’: Filming the Fear of Difference is forthcoming with Intellect Press.
Patricia Owens joined the Department of IR in 2011 after holding previous positions in London and Oxford (where she received a teaching excellence award). She has been a Visiting Professor at UCLA, a Research Fellow at Princeton and University of Southern California, a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley and holds graduate degrees from Cambridge and Aberystwyth. She is currently a Senior Research Associate at the Oxford programme on the Changing Character of War and on the editorial boards of Security Dialogue and Humanity: an International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development. Owens' current research is a book-length study of the relatively recent invention of the social realm as a concrete historical entity, category of political and international thought, and object of military and political strategy. The project establishes the historical specificity of the social in its international/imperial context; describes the ontology of the social as a form of household shaped by gendered, racial and inter-community hierarchies; suggests the implications for the main theories of politics and international relations; and offers an empirical analysis of how different paradigms of social regulation shape more recent interventions in the global South.