If we were to… have a blanket policy of not detaining pregnant women… I fear we would find quite a lot of people saying they were pregnant as another method of delaying their departure from the UK… I do not want this to be an excuse that women who are not pregnant dream up in order to throw a legal obstacle in the way.

These were the words of Mark Harper, former Minister for Immigration, in a UK Parliament debate on the detention of pregnant women on 5 September 2013. …

Patriarchy is embedded in the structure of academia. When individuals — or particular groups — face unfair, inequitable, or discriminatory situations in the academy, the infractions are often dismissed as anomalies. They’re not. We counter with the observation that bias on the basis of gender and parenthood is pervasive at all levels of the academy and these ‘everyday injustices’ are rooted in structural and institutional shortcomings, policy failures, and reliance on the historical status quo as a default.

It’s not a pipeline; it’s a winding and interrupted path

As we have discussed, the path from graduate school to the rank of full professor does not look like a pipeline that…

Leaders matter in international politics. The person who holds the office of the US president changed on 20 January; the powers vested in the office have not. Despite this most people expect major changes in foreign policy under the Biden administration, some of which have already materialized. Expectations of change are associated with the office-holder, not the office.

It goes without saying that leaders also matter in the global South. Indeed, it is difficult to dispute the key role that China’s Xi Jinping, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, India’s Narendra Modi, or Egypt’s Fattah el-Sisi play in the foreign policy of their…

In 2017 the editorial team at International Affairs launched the Early Career Prize, designed to celebrate the quality of the research published in the journal by authors with less than seven years of experience in the field of International Relations post-PhD. After a rigorous selection process, we can now reveal the four articles which made our shortlist for the 2021 prize.

Why?

It has rarely been harder to launch a career in academia. Current demands placed on PhD students and post-doctoral researchers in terms of teaching, course administration, outreach, and, of course, research, have been well documented. …

Blogposts can be a great way to get promote new research findings or get some initial thoughts down before you are ready to commit your ideas to more formal publication avenues. In this blogpost we outline some of our key advice for writing a successful blogpost, drawing on what we have learnt from running the International Affairs Blog. While not absolute rules, these tips can help to maximize the impact of your short-form writing.

1) Make the stakes of your research clear from the get-go

If you don’t make clear why your research matters, fewer people will read it. Start by establishing clear stakes, using language designed to capture the attention…

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda and environmental peacebuilding literature’s shared failure to engage more effectively with each other has directly undermined their attempts to foster sustainable peace. In our recent article in International Affairs we focus on the situation in Colombia to argue that the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) framework must take into account the lessons presented in the environmental peacebuilding literature. To do so, we made a concerted effort not only to draw on literatures in English language published in journals in the Global North but also to reference the rich literature published in Colombian publications…

This is the third International Women’s Day that we’ve put together a list of our favourite books written by women and reviewed in International Affairs in the last 12 months. Settling on a final list proved especially difficult given all the great books reviewed in International Affairs in the last year, so I’d encourage you browse our Top 5 book lists on the IA bookshelf!

1) International Relations narratives:

In celebration of International Women’s Day, I am so pleased to share with you that 54 per cent of International Affairs’ article authors in 2020 identified as women. Thank you so much to all our authors, peer reviewers, boards, supporters and contacts for making this happen!

We will be reporting on this more thoroughly, aiming at a similar report to the International Affairs gender balance report 2020, but the main message for today is: yes, we met our 50:50 challenge. …