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Anna's winning research project examines the dynamics of the global arms trade and its role as the coercive backbone of capitalism and the unfinished business of decolonization.

Professor Coleman is one of only four scholars to have won both early-career and mid-career fellowships from the ISRF.

Anna Stavrianakis - Professor of International Relations, and Lara Montesinos Coleman - Professor of International Law, Ethics and Political Economy (both School of Global Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences) have received Mid-Career Fellow Awards from the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF).

The ISRF awarded fellowships to seven academics for 2027-28 who submitted projects to the organisation’s eighth Mid-Career Fellowship competition, are more than ten years post-PhD, and have completed a one-year research project that challenges received narratives, methods, or conceptual paradigms and addresses real-world problems that remain under-studied or poorly understood. The competition is highly competitive and the fact that two awardees are from one Department at the University of Sussex is a robust reflection of the quality of research taking place within it.

Professor Stavrianakis’ research project, "Unfinished Business. Weapons, War and Empire in the 21st Century" traces the connections between the wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, Sudan and elsewhere, and their connections to austerity at home and global climate disaster. In so doing, it examines the dynamics of the global arms trade and its role as the coercive backbone of capitalism and the unfinished business of decolonization.

Professor Stavrianakis said:

“I am delighted to have ISRF support to write the book that's been brewing over many years. The award gives me writing time to tell the story of the global arms trade in an accessible way, to help people join the dots between wars overseas and crises we face at home.”

The award is Professor Coleman’s second from the ISRF following an Early-Career Fellowship award in 2014-15, making her one of only four scholars to have won both early-career and mid-career fellowships. Her Mid-Career Fellow award is for her research project, “Insurgent Humanism”, which draws on 20 years of political work and collective thinking within internationalist social movement networks and builds on her book Struggles for the Human (Duke University Press, 2024), shortlisted for the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award for Outstanding Scholarship in International Studies. As well as being the basis for a major theoretical intervention, the project will curate historical and contemporary primary sources, to build a ‘counter-archive’ of anti-colonial humanisms. This will provide, not simply a repository, but a critical intervention anticipating future solidarities.

Professor Coleman said:

“Like Anna, I'm thrilled to finally have the time to write this book and looking forward to being part of the next cohort of ISRF scholars. The ISRF is such a supportive funder with a real commitment to fostering interdisciplinary conversations among fellows which has been extremely generative for me in the past as well as the basis of long-lasting friendships and intellectual collaborations.”

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The Independent Social Research Foundation is a public benefit foundation funded by a group of private philanthropists with interests in academia and social science, founded in 2008. It is dedicated to advancing the social sciences through the promotion of new modes of inquiry and the development of interdisciplinary expertise and methods, and through better understanding of social entities and processes.