🎧 Reminder: RIS has a podcast! 🎧

We now have EIGHT episodes of the Review of International Studies podcast - well worth a listen, friends!

buff.ly/CJdduct

Something fierce. What Essex tells us about the fate of the plate glass universities The plate glass universities were founded on intimacy, radicalism and community. Adam Wright asks whether an obsession with growth has made those promises impossible to keep

A brilliant, if sobering, piece from my former Essex sparring partner, Adam Wright. It captures something uncomfortable about UK higher ed over the last decade: those who cared enough to question relentless expansion were often the ones pushed aside for doing it: wonkhe.com/blogs/someth...

I gave a campus talk last night on Trump's first 100 days for the WUD Society & Politics group. A student asked me if I thought that, at some point, we might start to describe the US as a competitive authoritarian regime. I said that we were already there, it's just that most folks haven't noticed:

Students: if you really think that generative AI can do things better than you - not just quicker, but better - then why would anyone hire you? It is such a huge gamble to take that these tools will be around in this form in 2, 3, or 4 years and that you will never be in a work situation where you

In the Shadow of the Damoclesian Border Abstract. In the contemporary international order, control of borders is the central totem of statehood. The call to “take back control” of borders was the

New paper!

academic.oup.com/isagsq/artic...

What does “taking back control of borders” feel like when you are the one being bordered?

It’s a good un

It is really unbelievable in the literal sense.

Congrats, Felix!!👍🎉

Thank you @hist-isanet.bsky.social! 🙏

@harokarkour.bsky.social and my paper on racial justice and the national interest in classical #realism won the Merze Tate Prize for the Best Article in Historical IR

@sussexfss.bsky.social

Find the article here (OA) 👇

academic.oup.com/isr/article/...

The World in 1776/2026: The Wealth of Nations at 250 This conference examines the continuing relevance of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, highlighting how his Enlightenment ideas about freedom, empire, and political economy shaped modern debates on...

We are living through an era of imperial polycrisis much like the one Smith tried to make sense of.

Here at @uofgsocsci.bsky.social, our program of conferences, exhibits and interactive experiences on “The World in 1776/2026” begins in June: www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/briti...

Cover page, Wealth of Nations, First Edition 1776

250 years ago today, Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not a proto-libertarian paean to free markets, but a blistering critique of vested interests, corporate power and the British Empire. Some favorite bits:

Stars are disappearing before our eyes — and something in us is shifting For most of human history, the night sky has been a shared inheritance, a source of wonder. Now, more than a billion children see barely any stars in the night sky above their homes. So what does that...

Fascinating, and sobering, exploration of how most of us no longer see the stars, and why that matters for how we see ourselves...
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

discount code for Subotic book

📚Book promotion day 📚 Here is a 30% discount code for my book AND the first chapter is ungated to read for free.

🚨🚨

The launch of Military Victory Beyond the Battlefield: Outside Wartime will be on 3 March 2026, 5.15pm @qmulsse.bsky.social

Chuffed to be joined by Aggie Hirst, Paul Higate, Kim Hutchings, @therealisthom.bsky.social, and @debbielisle.bsky.social.

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launc...

Just got my grubby hands on a hard copy of this gorgeous book, in which I'm grateful to have a chapter. Kudos and thanks again to @simonkoschut.bsky.social and @andrewagross.bsky.social for corralling us together to accomplish this!

2025 was a terrible, depressingly relevant year to be a scholar of technology and corporate power. Some of us tried to make sense of WTF happened here (free to read): doi.org/10.1017/S026...

Farewell The Hayseed Scholar podcast has come to a close. In this farewell episode, Brent's brother Kyle hosts it and they chat about the podcast and why Brent is closing it down. Two friends of the pod, Matt McDonald and Jelena Subotic, also join to mention what they liked and what they (Jelena) did not like about the podcast. Brent closes by asking Kyle, who is a LinkedIn rockstar, about the changing landscape of social media and reaching beyond an academic audience, before the two of them sign-off for good.

Farewell

The Hayseed Scholar podcast has come to a close. In this farewell episode, Brent's brother Kyle hosts it and they chat about the podcast and why Brent is closing it down. Two friends of the pod, Matt McDonald and Jelena Subotic, also join to mention what they liked and what they…

Emotions in Politics and International Relations seminar series: An introduction to Jacques Lacan- Emotions in Politics and International Relations (EPIR) | BISA - Emotions in Politics and International Relations (EPIR) Working Group

🚨NEXT EVENT🚨

📖 Seminar series session with Todd McGowan (U of Vermont), presenting his new ‘Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan’ and introducing Lacanian psychoanalysis for politics & IR.

🗓️ Wednesday 10 December, 4pm BST (online)

🔗Register here: www.bisa.ac.uk/members/work...

Transnational Kleptocracy and American Authoritarian Consolidation - Lawyers, Guns & Money Last week, Netflix reached a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s studios and streaming business. Some right-wing influencers were livid, because Netflix produces a fair amount of LGBTQ-friendly c...

I had *planned* on writing a post today about the ongoing sane-washing of the U.S. National Security Strategy, but I decided instead to put up a more detailed version of my skeets about the entanglement of Trump corruption, overseas autocratic wealth, and U.S. media consolidation.

Jervis Forum Review 149: Steele on Hom, International Relations and the Problem of Time H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum Review 149 Andrew R. Hom. International Relations and the Problem of Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. ISBN: 9780198850014 28…

It's a humbling, thrilling trip to have my book, IR & the Problem of Time, reviewed so generously by him who directly inspired me to do IR, Brent Steele @utah.edu Thanks also to @h-diplo.bsky.social & @szarejko.bsky.social for commissioning

issforum.org/reviews/jerv...

@edinburghpir.bsky.social

Congrats, Nicolai!!

🚨 New Publication in International Organization! 🚨

Happy to share our latest paper with @jeremymoulton.bsky.social:“The New Age of Myth: Political Narratives and the Reconstitution of World Order”, part of SI #IOFoGG on the Future of Global Governance. doi.org/10.1017/S002...
@iojournal.bsky.social

Graphic showing double page opening of emblem book from Stirling Maxwell Collection featuring portrait of a man on the left and a printed emblem of text and image on the right. The image is overlaid with information about the fellowship scheme welcoming researchers and repeating closing date and URL to follow.

📣Our UofG Library Visiting Research Fellowships are now open for applications!

We’re delighted to invite scholars from across the globe to apply to work with our internationally significant collections.

Apply at: www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/li...

📆Closing date: 5 January 2026

#UofGLibraryFellows

🚨Special issue on Global Politics of Cultural Heritage edited by @elifkalay.bsky.social and yours truly for @risjnl.bsky.social is now fully out! The project is about placing cultural heritage at the core of IR. Here is the intro, individual articles in thread👇

Check out this intro to our forthcoming special issue, by two scholarly forces of nature

New paper!

Ian Paterson and I explore Scotland’s desecuritisation of immigration, outlining how desecurisation can be an affectively attractive method to pursue the self as well as an ethical ontological security seeking practice.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🔔Reminder that there’s just one week to go to make your submissions for #BISA2026! Deadline: 3 Nov

We’re looking forward to your panel/paper submissions to our section✊🏻👇🏻

📢Call for Abstracts📢
Bianca Naude and I are looking to put together a panel on state personhood for #BISA2026!

We are looking for new conceptualizations of state personhood, new critiques, as well as reflections on relevant post-2004 disciplinary and political developments!✨

@mybisa.bsky.social

If you think that professors exist as repositories of knowledge that students ask for answers, you’re missing the entire point of a college education.

We’re here to teach students how to do research, how to analyze and argue, how to think for themselves — how to find the answers on their own.