Job! the IR Dept at ANU is hiring an entry-level position to teach both at ANU in Canberra and, intermittently, into our joint program with Ritsumeikan University in Osaka. Details in the ad. Happy to answer questions. jobs.anu.edu.au/jobs/lecture...

Germany reintroduced a soft form of military service in 2026. While service remains voluntary, all male 18‑year‑olds must undergo military medical tests, including a testicle check. But what is this sovereign touch about? Spoiler: it offers little medical value but plenty of sociological insight.

It's got a cover! Coming out in June.

"‘Baleful influence’: a conceptual analysis of militarism" by Bryan Mabee and Srdjan Vucetic is out now in EJIR and available online. You can read it here: t1p.de/4s6sq

Next in our ANU Southeast Asia Institute seminar series: Professor Itty Abraham (Arizona State University). Online, 15 October 2pm AEST. Abstract and registration: events.humanitix.com/bandung-at-7...

www.bradleyrsimpson.com/self-determi... Modeling archival sharing and collaborative research, @bradleyrsimpson.bsky.social shares significant portions of the archival material behind THE FIRST RIGHT, his exciting new book on self-determination - global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Its out in the world!

seeing the recognition of Palestinian statehood dismissed as 'performative' (US State Dept) makes me wonder how the meaning of the word 'performative' has gone from words that do things (Austin, Butler) to words that do nothing

The Hague Journal of Diplomacy's Special Issue on Caste in Indian Diplomacy & IR is out. Edited by Vineet Thakur, Pavan Kumar & Kalathmika Natarajan @kalathmika.bsky.social @haguediplomacyjrnl.bsky.social brill.com/view/journal...

At a time when politics feels bleak and frustrating, I wrote a book on empathy and politics to inject much needed hope into the conversation and offer some ideas for change. Out soon with @yalebooks.bsky.social @yalepress.bsky.social and available for preorder now 📚 #Empathy #Politics #Leadership

Talk by @quahsayjye.bsky.social next week for the ANU Southeast Asia Institute seminar series. It's online. This pic of Lee Kuan Yew and Samuel Huntington from 1970 is a nice teaser of Quah's argument and his wider project on global intellectual history. events.humanitix.com/the-singapor...

Between a "No Other Land" crew mate filming himself being killed by a settler, to a journalist being killed by airstrikes he was covering minutes earlier, I'm not sure how much more televised Israel's genocide can be

Absolutely mind-blown! 🤯 What an honour to receive this prize. Enormous thanks to the prize committee, everyone who helped sharpen the argument & my incredible interlocutors in Crimea for whom the struggle for human rights continues.

Fred Cooper tackling the concepts of decolonization and decoloniality in new Comparative Studies in Society & History article: "Decolonizing Decolonization."

From Mississippi Masala and Monsoon Wedding to Zohran Mamdani – Mira Nair is a gift that keeps giving.

These "hunger games" being played by Israel and the US are so disgusting. The humiliation and terrorizing and murdering of Palestinians via inhumanitarian aid is further evidence of how dehumanized Israel and the US are. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

SecDef Hegseth's Shangri-La Dialogue speech repeated conventional wisdom that's already eroded. No longer a functional division of getting security from US, prosperity from China. China's emerged as a global security provider, as @ibkardon.bsky.social and I show in @intsecurity.bsky.social:

For a supposedly ‘international’ organisation, the email sent by the ISA President basically begging and browbeating scholars to make the trip to Columbus, Ohio is just amazingly tone deaf. Attending is couched in smorgasbord of hyperbolic rhetoric, WW2(!), the Cold War(!), Gandhi (!) without so

If I read this correctly, I should not let my pithy self-interest in not getting deported to El Salvador allow me to evade my moral responsibility to hang out in some Hilton hallway (and pay conference fees).

🚨 New Publication in International Political Sociology: #Sociability, #Emotions, and Encounters with the Uncommon Other: World-Making at the Rokumeikan Find the paper here (open-access): academic.oup.com/ips/article/...

Join us for the Fred Halliday Memorial Lecture 2024/25, where Prof @georgelawson.bsky.social, Dr @jasminekgani.bsky.social, and Prof Toby Dodge will explore the relationship between revolutions and world order in contemporary geopolitics. 🎫 Find out more & register to attend online: bit.ly/4kh5uTy

My article with Jamie Levin, on nuclear strategy, firearms analogies, and settler colonialism, is now out at Security Dialogue. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The editors Matthew Phillips & Naoko Shimazu (neither of whom are on Bluesky) have asked me to share news of this new book: A visual history of diplomacy in Cold War Asia. I'm very pleased to have contributed a chapter #HistIR @ndh-network.bsky.social #diplomacy @cambridgeup.bsky.social

Wild. Right after Cory Booker went viral for speaking on the "wretched truth about America," he just voted to keep arming a government that just officially achieved The Deadliest Conflict Ever for Journalists & executed and buried 15 paramedics and their emergency vehicles

@georgelawson.bsky.social reflecting on 75 years of IR/area studies at the ANU. This intro to the special issue is a compelling set of reflections on Aussie IR from a UK expat. Main takeaway: the ANU is still a cracking place to do IR, and the future of IR, at the ANU at least, is in good hands. 🙌🏻

By the brilliant @rahulraothariel.bsky.social

Imperial boomerang all the way down

A very good piece. Perhaps the somewhat benign sub-heading "US diplomats first persuaded the World" should better capture the core point here that this shift came about with the US experimenting with new models of Empire (unlike, say, the Dutch or the French).

🎓 New article by @quahsayjye.bsky.social which looks at Sukarno and proposes three dimensions of worldmaking: discursive, institutional, and dramaturgical.

Why do many IOs struggle to learn despite a plethora of formal learning processes and tools? In my new ISQ article, I argue that the criticism culture—the way IOs deal with criticism from their employees—is an overlooked but crucial variable to explain (the lack of) learning in IOs. 🧵 lmy.de/DsCjm

The president’s address at @isanet.bsky.social was peacefully disrupted to draw institutional attention to the issue of democratisation in ISA governance and the acknowledgement of scholasticide in how we conduct research ‘as normal’ #isa2025

I’ve been going to ISA since 2018. Past the disappointment of not going this year long ago, really glad not to be in #Chicago in March for #ISA2025 . So sad to have to read this. Good luck to all going.

Breathtaking historical illiteracy combined with multiple levels of dehumanisation. At least 1 million people died and more than 15 million people were displaced as a consequence of partition, followed by decades of trauma.

RFK Jr’s ideas about Black people’s immune systems (theguardian.com/us-news/2025...) can be traced back to past medical claims about Black people's suitability for enslavement (academic.oup.com/isq/article/...).

My review of historian Mattias Fibiger's new book "Suharto's Cold War: Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and the World." pacificaffairs.ubc.ca/book-reviews...

"Bourdieu & IR": Our IPS group @DVPW is organizing an online talk on Bourdieu-inspired IR research with three excellent speakers: Catriona Standfield, @deepaknair.bsky.social & Leonie Holthaus (@tuda.bsky.social). 17 January, 2pm - please join us! :) Registration: [email protected]

newbooksnetwork.com/suhartos-col... Great to talk with Mattias Fibiger about Suharto's Cold War on the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social

I had an unforgettable book workshop last week in Western Sweden, discussing manuscripts by @deepaknair.bsky.social and Ann Towns with Ole Jacob Sending, @aglas.bsky.social and Vincent Pouliot. I feel lucky to have such wonderful friends and colleagues who write such creative and important books

No paywall. www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/w...

"During the first six weeks of the war in Gaza, Israel routinely used one of its biggest and most destructive bombs in areas it designated safe for civilians, according to an analysis of visual evidence by The New York Times."

It is so heartening to see the peoples of tri-continents uniting in bidding good riddance to the man who facilitated genocide on three continents and burnt entire countries down to the ground.

Podcast episode featuring Sally Abed, Amjad Iraqi, Orly Noy, and me and Joey Ayoub as co-hosts. I wanted to listen and learn from the folks doing the most to uphold radical empathy and justice in Israel Palestine podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM...

What a glorious, powerful, beautiful letter of resignation: "So I refuse. I won’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more sanitized hell-words. No more warmongering lies."

So much respect.

Chotiner interviewed a member of the Klan www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Our new symposium out in International Theory on Global IR and how it can avoid the essentialism trap. tl;dr we recommend more global history! (On that 🤝 I also had a nice chat with Glenda Sluga & Heidi Tworek, out from Toynbee Prize Foundation site soon) www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The United Nations has recorded 222 settler attacks against Palestinians over the past month. Eight people, including a child, have been killed. Another 64 Palestinians have been injured, more than a quarter by live ammunition.

Reuters' Kevin Lamarque

"The number of children reported killed in Gaza in just three weeks has surpassed the annual number of children killed across the world's conflict zones since 2019" Save the Children