Lecturer in International Relations

The School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast, is one of the UK’s leaders in internationally recognised research and teaching in Politics and International Relations (IR). The School seeks to appoint a Lecturer to support research and teaching in the field of International Relations.

We conceive of IR as a dynamic intellectual space that is currently transforming itself in the face of global challenges that both trouble and exceed familiar disciplinary conventions. These challenges include, but are not limited to: new dynamics of global order and disorder; irreversible climate breakdown; the rise of global pandemics; new forms of capitalist extraction; intensifying patterns of irregular migration and asylum; the fracturing of Democratic norms by polarization and extremism; increased reliance on technological and algorithmic governance; the collapse of global financial institutions; the impotence of global development policies; persistent gender-based violence; the dilemmas of security, mobility and liberty; reduced capacities for protest and resistance; the messy aftermath of entrenched conflict; and the blurring of war, policing and occupation.

To help us critically interrogate such ongoing upheavals, we seek to appoint a lecturer whose research and teaching push the boundaries of IR’s received modes of knowledge production. The IR collective in HAPP consists of open-minded, ambitious and curious scholars who seek to push disciplinary boundaries. We value research that is theoretically robust, empirically rich, and draws on the latest methodological debates in the field.

About the person:

We are looking for a scholar in the field of International Relations whose research and teaching challenge received epistemological orientations in the discipline, and who is committed to critically interrogating the many global challenges we currently face. Particular areas of IR we are interested in developing include, but are not limited to:

• Interrogating new formations of security, war and violence that exceed conventional disciplinary orientations in IR.
• Critically analysing the transformation of international politics through AI, Machine Learning, algorithmic governance, Big Data and digital formations.
• Addressing legacies of exclusion through, for example, decolonial, feminist, queer, and indigenous epistemologies.
• Investigating new practices of global governance, diplomacy and statecraft that are seeking to manage an increasingly fractured international order.
• Analysing the connections between various ‘crises’ currently being unleashed by a fracturing international order (e.g. financial collapse; migration and asylum; entrenched conflict; humanitarian emergencies).

The essential criteria of the post include:

• A completed PhD in International Relations or cognate subject.
• Evidence of high-quality research and the ability to produce publications in the field of IR, broadly defined, of an international standard commensurate with stage of career.
• Broad general knowledge of IR sufficient to be able to significantly contribute to the undergraduate Politics & IR teaching programme.
• Evidence of committed participation within the academic community, nationally and internationally.
• Demonstrable evidence of high-quality teaching in IR at an undergraduate level and the potential for outstanding teaching at MA level.
• Clear potential for successful supervision of undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations.