Research
My research agenda marries two scholarly fields; I specialise in questions of state creation and secessionist conflict, as well as in traditional and critical theories of international security. My publications can be found below. My book - about classical realism and the representation, emancipation, and agency of de facto states in international politics - was recently published with Routledge. Further below, therefore, I have outlined my new avenues of research.
Publications
Contested Statehood in a Contested International Order: Furthering a Research Agenda
Interpretivism in International Relations Research
Why Declare Independence? Observing, Believing, and Performing The Ritual
Contemporary Humanitarian Intervention: Beyond Rules-Based International Order
The De Facto Sovereignty of Unrecognised States: Towards a Classical Realist Perspective?
Asia’s Security [Book Review]
New Avenues of Research
Overpopulation, Narcissism, and The International
This project builds on recent IR research on existentialism and global anxieties about the future, by delving into the concept of 'narcissism' and its potential application for IR theorising.
A surprisingly underexplored concept in IR scholarship, narcissism may in fact be a foundational affect in making ‘the international’. Grappling with the question whether/how studying ‘the international’ requires a theoretical abstraction, the project asks whether/how ‘the international’ necessarily cultivates an ideological, epistemological, and practical temptation to omit oneself from ‘necessary sacrifices to save the planet’, and/or to maintain that Others should ‘bear the consequences’ of pervasive global problems.
This project will operationalise this exploration by zooming in on the ways in which ‘end-of-humanity' discourses intersect with discourses of global overpopulation. The intersection of these two discourses, the paper finds, constitutes a keen exemplification of the operation of narcissism in global politics. Informed by a brief case study on the Club of Rome – and especially its 1972 Limits to Growth publication – the paper argues that an analysis of the intersections between narcissism and ‘the international’ helps to progress the study of existentialist/anxious global futures and human extinction in IR scholarship.
It has been presented at the European Workshops in International Studies in Istanbul (3-7 July 2024).
Benedict Anderson and De Facto Statehood
This project involves a deep-read of Benedict Anderson’s classic on Imagined Communities. I relate this reading to new critical strands of de facto states research, which conceptualise the ‘statehood’ of these political communities not in terms of absolute physical political power, but as based on overlapping, networked, improvised, discursive, constructed, and/or performative social processes. In a sense, such scholarship argues, the statehood of de facto states may be legally non-recognised, but is nonetheless realised through the imagination of local elites and populations.
This project therefore seeks to complement the ‘imaginary’ conceptualisations of de facto statehood with Anderson’s foregrounding of national imagination(s). In short, I try to bring common theories of de facto statehood in conversation with Anderson’s foundational piece on nationalism, revealing how such a conversation could offer a critical understanding of the (in)distinctions between nationhood and statehood.
Talking Past Each Other? The Politics of Translating Sovereignty in Aotearoa New Zealand
This project aims to combine the burgeoning field of study of ‘the politics of translation’ in IR (Capan, dos Reis, and Grasten 2021; Caraccioli et al. 2021) with Aotearoa New Zealand’s ongoing sense-making of its 'sovereignty history'. Analysing the written declarations of He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni (1835) and Te Tiriti o Waitangi (1840), as well as more contemporary assessments of Māori sovereignty (e.g. Matike Mai Aotearoa 2016; Waitangi Tribunal 2014), this project strives to uncover the importance of distinguishing between ‘conceptual’ and ‘translational’ politics in both the drafting and interpreting of indigenous sovereignty claims in Aotearoa.
The contents of each of these two historical documents, their comparative relationship, and the divergences between English and te reo versions, have all provoked many different notions of what ‘sovereignty’ means in an Aotearoa context. While nowadays it is pretty firmly established that Māori never actually ceded ‘English-language’ sovereignty to the British Crown, this establishment has ostensibly not actually invoked (more) unitary or definitive conceptions of Māori sovereignty itself.
This project's premise, however, is that resolutions to such ambiguity cannot be found in practices of translation, but in the (re)conceptualisation and (re)interpretation of Māori sovereignty. In Aotearoa, to highlight the idea of two different languages (te reo Māori and English) rather than different conceptions of sovereignty is to depoliticise and efface the normative and conceptual contestation over Māori rights, privileges, and powers in New Zealand.
Embracing the limitations of the English language when understanding and judging indigenous (Māori) ‘sovereignty’ claims, this project therefore emphasises the importance of acknowledging the conceptual rather than translational relationship between the latter’s ‘tino rangatiratanga’ and the former’s ‘sovereignty’. Conceptual contestation over Māori sovereignty should not revolve around the differences between English and Māori languages, but around what ‘tino rangatiratanga’ means.
One of this project's aspirations is to supplement common post-positivist assertions in IR scholarship about the unsettledness and western-centrism of the sovereignty concept. Its most important goal, however, is not to whitesplain to indigenous (Māori) communities their sovereignty’s ‘real make-up’, but instead to show that any uncertainty over Māori sovereignty in Aotearoa is not borne out of ‘translational contestation’ between English and te reo, but out of contestation over conceptual usage and interpretation. Accordingly, the meaning of Māori sovereignty hinges on political judgement and action – not on ‘translational technicality’.
A draft paper coming out of this project was presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions 2022 and the ISA Convention 2023 in Montreal.