Dr Patricia Owens

Biography

For 2012-13, Patricia Owens is a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/

Owens joined the Department of International Relations in 2011 after holding previous positions in London and the University of Oxford (where she recieved a teaching excellence award). She has been a Visiting Professor at UCLA; the Seton-Watson Research Fellow in IR at Oriel College, Oxford; the Jane Eliza Proctor Research Fellow at Princeton University; a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Southern California, and a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, supported by a grant from the Social Science Research Council. Owens holds graduate degrees from Cambridge and Aberystwyth.

Owens is currently co-editor of European Journal of International Relations; 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. 

Role

Management Committee, Centre for Advanced International Theory

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. It's borne of dissatisfaction with existing political theories of international relations, especially the a-historicism of the recent 'social turn'. Rather than a timeless and universally applicable concept, a distinct and identifiable social realm and 'social' explanations for political developments date only to late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century imperial Europe. 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.

Past research has focussed on international political theory (including work on Arendt, Strauss, Schmitt, Habermas, Agamben, Marx); international theory (including classical realism, critical theory, liberalism, cosmopolitanism); the history and theory of warfare and politics (including military intervention, ethics of war, civilian casualties, refugees, counterinsurgency, human security, military orientalism, gender); and political theory (thought of Hannah Arendt).

I am happy to consider supervising research projects in any of these areas.

Owens, Patricia (2013) From Bismarck to Petraeus: the question of the social and the social question in counterinsurgency. European Journal of International Relations, 19 (1). pp. 135-157. ISSN 1354-0661

Owens, Patricia (2012) Human security and the rise of the social. Review of International Studies, 38 (3). pp. 547-567. ISSN 0260-2105

Owens, Patricia (2012) Not life but the world is at stake: Hannah Arendt on citizenship in the age of the social. Citizenship Studies, 16 (2). pp. 297-307. ISSN 1362-1025

Owens, Patricia (2011) The supreme social concept: the un-worldliness of modern security. New Formations, 71. pp. 14-29. ISSN 0950-2378

Owens, Patricia (2011) The return of realism? War and changing concepts of the political. In: The Changing Character of War. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 484-502. ISBN 9780199596737

Owens, Dr Patricia, Baylis, J and Smith, S, eds. (2010) The Globalization of World Politics: an Introduction to International Relations. Oxford University Press.

Owens, Dr Patricia, Baylis, J, Smith, S and Lamy, S, eds. (2010) Introduction to Global Politics. Oxford University Press.

Owens, Patricia (2010) The ethics of war: critical alternatives. In: Ethics and world politics. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199548620

Owens, Patricia (2010) Walking corpses: Arendt on the limits and the possibilities of cosmopolitan politics. In: International Relations Theory and Philosophy: Interpretive Dialogues. Routledge, pp. 72-82. ISBN 9780415462266

Owens, Patricia (2010) Torture, sex and military orientalism. Third World Quarterly, 31 (7). pp. 1041-1056. ISSN 0143-6597

Owens, Patricia (2009) Reclaiming "bare life"? Against Agamben on refugees. International Relations, 23 (4). pp. 567-582. ISSN 0047-1178

Owens, Patricia (2009) Hannah Arendt. In: Critical Theorists and International Relations. Routledge, Oxon, United Kingdom and New York, pp. 31-41. ISBN 9780415474658

Owens, Patricia (2008) The ethic of reality in Hannah Arendt. In: Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on a Realist Theme. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 105-121. ISBN 9780199556274

Owens, Patricia (2008) 'Humanity, sovereignty and the camps'. International Politics, 45 (4). pp. 522-530. ISSN 1384-5748

Owens, Patricia (2008) Distinctions, distinctions: "public" and "private" force? International Affairs, 84 (5). pp. 977-990. ISSN 0020-5850

Smith, Steve and Owens, Patricia (2008) 'Alternative Approaches to International Theory'. In: The Globalization of World Politics. Oxford University Press, pp. 174-91.

Owens, Patricia (2007) Between war and politics: international relations and the thought of Hannah Arendt. Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York.

Owens, Patricia (2007) Beyond Strauss, lies, and the war in Iraq: Hannah Arendt's critique of neoconservatism. Review of International Studies, 33 (2). pp. 265-283. ISSN 0260-2105

Owens, Patricia (2005) Hannah Arendt, violence, and the inescapable fact of humanity. In: Hannah Arendt and International Relations: Reading across the Lines. The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought . Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 41-65. ISBN 9781403967831

Owens, Patricia (2005) Hannah Arendt: a biographical and political introduction. In: Hannah Arendt and International Relations: Reading across the Lines. The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought . Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 27-40. ISBN 9781403967831

Owens, Patricia (2004) Xenophilia, gender and sentimental humanitarianism. Alternatives, 29 (3). pp. 285-304. ISSN 0304-3754

Owens, Patricia (2004) Theorising military intervention. International Affairs, 80 (2). pp. 355-365. ISSN 0020-5850

Owens, Patricia (2003) 'Accidents don't just happen: the liberal politics of high-tech humanitarian war'. Millennium, 32 (3). pp. 595-616. ISSN 0305-8298