Quite appalling. U of Chicago’s management has achieved the impossible feat of making the UK universities seem well-run in comparison www.compactmag.com/article/the-...

‪Are we living through an unprecedented 'polycrisis' or have we seen this before? 🗺️ Join IR scholar @aysezarakol.bsky.social and @us.theguardian.com editor Betsy Reed at this year's Vienna Humanities Festival, as they examine whether history does indeed rhyme: humanitiesfestival.at/zarakol

#OpenAccess - Reply to ‘How (not) to advance Global IR: a rejoinder’ - cup.org/45b9yPh - Michael Barnett & @aysezarakol.bsky.social #FirstView

Tomorrow

We have a few spaces left still. This Friday

Reminder, next week!

Now available for pre-order from OUP, more musings by me and others about the 1990s... global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Our annual IR-History conference is a happening a bit later this year, but it is happening. The theme is 'Times of Disorder'. If you work in the IR-History space, do join us to meet likeminded researchers. ECRs especially welcome! Please register for free at tinyurl.com/June13Cam

An article I could have written but have not written has mysteriously appeared on my Google Scholar page with two citations (now hidden). It has a journal name, volume, page numbers what have you. Pretty good journal too. Thanks ChatGPT, I guess? 🤔

Why do we have such difficulty making sense of our current moment? I brainstorm some possible answers www.theideasletter.org/essay/certai...

Submissions for SSHA's Sharlin Memorial Book Prize are now open for any social science history book published in 2024. I am chairing the committee this year. ssha.org/awards-and-p...

Social media platform X has blocked the account of Ekrem İmamoğlu, a leader of Turkey's opposition movement and political nemesis of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Can we have a ten year moratorium on handbooks please 🙏

Getting hassled about my railcard for a tiny discount on an extremely overpriced journey on a train with no flat surfaces to work on, no wifi + half the way is a bus replacement 💁‍♀️

Yet another day of travelling to Oxford for an event and realising it is almost easier to travel internationally. It’s amazing we manage to collaborate at all

IO has just released a call for short essays on the future of IR, given all that is going on. Deadline June 15 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...?

Cambridge IR & History group hosted Julia Costa Lopez @jcostalopez.bsky.social today for her presentation on ‘Can women rule? A processual approach to legitimacy and international order through a 15th century succession dispute’. Looking forward to the book version of the project!

Talking about global disorder with my academic fathers in Tokyo @davidleheny.bsky.social

Amazing performance by the Cambridge teams today! www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rowing...

Talking about Trump and other strongmen www.economist.com/podcasts/202...

Hard to pay attention to the academy these days but do check out Martin’s excellent article on elites & ontological security @campolis.bsky.social academic.oup.com/isagsq/artic...

Starmer’s silence criticised by Turkish opposition www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkeys...

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Autocrats behaving badly: Donald Trump emboldens global strongmen

Major and timely collection from @chathamhouse.org on competing visions of international order including a contribution on Turkey co-authored by @britishacademy.bsky.social Fellow @aysezarakol.bsky.social www.chathamhouse.org/2025/03/comp...

I thought I had cured myself of 'being too distracted by breaking developments to concentrate on work' but the last week has shown it was all hubris on my part

Erdoğan seems to have concluded -likely rightly- that the international environment is permissive enough for him to do whatever he wants. Pretence is no longer required

Way to go Jaakko & Ethnos of the Earth! www.cambridge.org/core/books/e...

I made a meme. Americans unhappy with Trump need to accept there is not a normal to go back to.

Recent chapter co-authored w @caschulz.bsky.social: "The Turn to the History of International Law in the Field of International Relations. In: Lesaffer R, Peters A, eds. The Cambridge History of International Law. The Cambridge History of International Law. Cambridge University Press; 2024:136-161."

And a great panel it was for a great book, now available from Cambridge UP

Our forum on Jens Bartelson's magisterial Becoming International is now out in Global Intellectual History (as organised by Kim Hutchings and Jaakko Heiskanen). Including pieces by Or Rosenboim, Quentin Bruneau, Regan Burles, me, and of course Jens himself... www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The current state of American politics is like a big-budget Hollywood remake of a foreign language movie many of us have seen already

This Thursday, IR-History Working Group at Cambridge

The transcript of our Bilkent debate in September where I unexpectedly found myself defending Global IR (all debate positions are relational…)

Great to hang out with the great IR/politics group at Exeter, with special thanks to @profalexp.bsky.social for inviting me

This Thursday in Cambridge

Don't forget to nominate your 2024 book or article for APSA International History and Politics Section prizes. Deadline January 31st! connect.apsanet.org/s34/nominati...

In two weeks, an exciting talk about informers

A conversation with John de Bhal of the Reimagining World Project (Princeton) open.spotify.com/episode/0M7d...

Stray observation: I am constantly struck by how little Western observers attempt to connect the dots between the dynamics in various conflicts in what used to be called ‘the Near East’ (roughly the +2/3 GMT time zone from north to south)

It’s undergraduate admissions week in Cambridge! Tomorrow I/we will be interviewing candidates face to face for the first time since 2019. An ongoing experiment of sorts…

Where not #OpenAccess, the articles in our 2023 volume are free to read until the end of this year - cup.org/3Vo2Ph1 With papers by @moritz-graefrath.com, @janinadill.bsky.social, @aysezarakol.bsky.social, @drjohnnygilmore.bsky.social, @victoriahui.bsky.social & more

Happy to announce the birth of a new book! How/why did empires relentlessly expand - and worked together? Not competition but transaction and cooperation was key to the Age of Empires in the long 19th century. With brilliant colleagues Erik de Lange & Ozan Ozavci: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/securing-...

NEW EPISODE OUT NOW! Today’s bad idea concerns history itself: David talks to world historian @aysezarakol.bsky.social about the temptations and the pitfalls of the idea of The End of History, a phrase popularised by Francis Fukuyama in 1989. Find us at...🎧 ppfideas.com

Everyone ought to listen to this absolutely brilliant conversation on @ppfideas.bsky.social with @aysezarakol.bsky.social - surgically zooming in and out, a beautiful consideration of what history means, and despite the veneer of pessimism, as it ends there is a feeling of freedom

NEW ISSUE from Ethics & International Affairs - cup.org/491dJPn Includes a roundtable: The Problem with International Order Papers by @trineflockhart.bsky.social, @aysezarakol.bsky.social, @linabenabdallah.bsky.social, @jennifermitzen.bsky.social, @ncrenic.bsky.social, and more

📣Starting off skeeting in true academic style, by shamelessly self-promoting, of course! Securing Empire is officially published! 🎉 It explores how 'security' fueled imperial cooperation but it was also used to justify imperial/colonial expansion & violence in the 19c, much like today 👇👇🏽👇🏿 1/3

Joseph MacKay is officially admitted to Emmanuel as a Derek Brewer fellow tonight! @lefteleven.bsky.social

Forthcoming article: Duncan Bell, "John Stuart Mill on Federation, Civilization, and Empire," History of Political Thought (2025) @thecambridgeschool.bsky.social www.academia.edu/110100929/Jo... via @academia