Rate My Professor Sean Burges

Sean Burges serves as Assistant Professor in the Bachelor of Global and International Studies within Carleton University's Faculty of Public Affairs, with an adjunct appointment as Research Professor in Political Science. He earned his BA and MA from the University of Western Ontario and his PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick. Burges adopts an inductive, interdisciplinary approach to exploring development, international political economy, foreign policy, and comparative politics. His scholarship centers on Brazilian foreign policy and inter-American affairs, while encompassing South-South relations, international development policy, regional integration, democratization, international political economy, and comparative policy formulation. He examines how developing country governments and actors leverage international opportunities to advance domestic development objectives. Current research investigates business-government dynamics underlying Brazil's outreach to Africa during Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva's presidency, alongside foreign policy decision-making, corruption, democratic consolidation, and evolving Southern perspectives on the global order.

Before joining Carleton, Burges was Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Australian National University, where he convened undergraduate international relations programs and served as deputy director of the Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies. His professional experience includes roles in the Government of Canada at the Canadian International Development Agency, Canada Border Services Agency, and as Cadieux-Leger Fellow with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Burges's influential publications include the monograph Brazilian Foreign Policy After the Cold War (University Press of Florida, 2009) and Brazil in the World: The International Relations of a South American Giant (Manchester University Press, 2017), which received the Latin American Studies Association's 2018 Luciano Tomassini Latin American International Relations Book Award. Key journal articles feature 'Consensual Hegemony: Theorizing Brazilian Foreign Policy after the Cold War' (International Relations, 2008), 'Building a Global Southern Coalition: The Competing Approaches of Brazil's Lula and Venezuela's Chávez' (Third World Quarterly, 2007), 'Brazil as a Bridge between Old and New Powers?' (International Affairs, 2013), and 'Without Sticks or Carrots: Brazilian Leadership in South America during the Cardoso Era, 1992–2003' (Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2006), the latter awarded the Society for Latin American Studies Harold Blakemore Essay Prize. Through consultancy, media engagement, and outreach, Burges bridges academic and practitioner perspectives, enhancing discourse on Latin American international relations and Global South dynamics.