The edited volume Women's International Thought: A New History (Cambridge University Press, 2021), edited by Dr Katharina Rietzler (American Studies/History) and Prof. Patricia Owens (Oxford, formerly International Relations at Sussex) has just received two book prizes: the 2021 Joseph Fletcher Prize for Best Edited Book in Historical International Relations, and the 2021 Best Edited Volume, Special Issue, or Symposium Book Award by the Theory Section of the International Studies Association (ISA).

Joseph F. Fletcher (1934-1984) was a historian and a ground-breaker in the turn toward global history. The Joseph Fletcher Prize is given annually and recognises the best edited book copyrighted in the previous calendar year on subjects related to historical international relations. 

The International Studies Association Theory Section award recognises work that contributes to the theorisation of world politics.

Women’s International Thought: A New History is the first cross-disciplinary history of women’s international thought. Bringing together some of the foremost historians and scholars of international relations working today, the book recovers and analyses the path-breaking work of eighteen leading thinkers of international politics from the early to mid-twentieth century. Recovering and analysing this important work, the essays offer revisionist accounts of IR's intellectual and disciplinary history and expand the locations, genres, and practices of international thinking.

The book is part of a major Leverhulme-funded research project (2018-2022), which was conceived at the University of Sussex before moving to the University of Oxford in 2020. Other outputs include several journal articles, an oral history archive, an exhibition at the LSE Women’s Library (opening in May 2022) and the forthcoming anthology Women’s International Thought: Towards a New Canon (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Women’s International Thought: A New History has been reviewed in in International Affairs and Foreign Affairs and was included in the 2021 International Affairs summer reading list. It also features on course reading lists at Oxford, Princeton, EUI, FU Berlin, Utah, Amsterdam, Royal Military College Sandhurst and others.

Katharina Rietzler says: “These awards are a wonderful recognition not only of the intellectual importance of recovering women’s thought but also the value of cross-disciplinary research and writing. I am deeply grateful to my co-editor, Patricia Owens, all contributors to the book, Cambridge University Press, the awarding committees, and Sussex University, where this collaboration began and whose tradition of intellectual openness was a source of inspiration.”