Rate My Professor Debbie Lisle

Professor Debbie Lisle is Professor of International Relations in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen's University Belfast, affiliated with Politics and International Relations and the Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. She obtained her BA in Political Science from McGill University in 1992, MA in Political Science from the University of Victoria in 1996, and PhD in International Relations from Keele University in 2000, receiving the British International Studies Association Best PhD Thesis Award. Lisle's research in critical International Relations and International Political Sociology engages with debates on failure, mobility, security, borders, and technology. She explores the role of cultural and visual artifacts like contemporary travel writing, museum exhibits, photographs, art, and war films in world politics, with a particular focus on the entanglements of war and tourism, securitization of leisure spaces post-9/11, and more-than-representational aspects of war such as drones and surveillance. Her seminal book, Holidays in the Danger Zone: Entanglements of War and Tourism (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), won the International Political Sociology Best Book Award in 2018.

Since joining Queen's University Belfast in 1999, Lisle has held various academic roles, including pathway convener for MA programs in International Relations and Global Security and Borders, and contributor to modules on Contemporary Security and Visual Politics. As Editor-in-Chief of International Political Sociology since March 2022, she shapes discourse in the field. Recent works include the article "Irretrievable failure: life in the ruins of utopian dreaming" with Martin Coward (European Journal of Social Theory, 2025), "Making it worse: productive failure as global common sense" (International Political Sociology, 2025), and chapters on border trajectories and militarised tourism. Lisle earned the IPS Distinguished Scholar Award in 2020, was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 2026, and serves on boards like the European International Studies Association. She supervises PhDs in areas such as Critical Security Studies, Visual Culture, Mobility, Poststructuralism, and Critical War Studies, and has participated in projects including the Leverhulme Network on Cybersecurity and Society.