On 22-25 January 2018, JIAS, in collaboration with the World International Studies Committee (WISC), hosted a workshop on ‘Teaching IR Globally’. IR scholars from various countries discussed how International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline was being taught and should be taught globally.
Questions they considered included the following: Is IR necessarily biased towards a ‘national’ perspective, or could and should it break free from the ‘methodological nationalism’ in which so many academics in the social sciences and humanities seem trapped? If a ‘view from nowhere’ is impossible, how should the discipline reflect on this (potentially) inevitable perspectivity?
WISC (https://www.wiscnetwork.net/) seeks to bring together academics from all over the world – but especially from the Global South — to explore different aspects of international studies from multple perspectives. To this end, WISC has already funded a variety of ‘Exploratory Workshops’ in the Global South.
It co-sponsored an international workshop for Early Career Researchers on the theme ‘World Order and Peace: International Politics in the 21st Century in a Global Perspective’ in December 2017, and will sponsor another one later in 2018. Its collaboration with JIAS forms part of this endeavour of reaching out beyond the Northern hemisphere.
The participants were:
Alexander Astrov (Hungary)
Navnita Behera (India)
Pinar Bilgin (Turkey)
Siba N Grovogui (Guinea/USA)
Stefano Guzzini (Italy/Germany/Denmark)
Gunther Hellmann (Germany)
Benjamin Herborth (Germany/ Netherlands)
Amy Niang (South Africa)
Meera Sabaratnam (India/UK)
Karen Smith (South Africa/ Netherlands)
Vineet Thakur (India/Netherlands/South Africa)
Arlene B. Tickner (Colombia/USA)
Ole Weaver (Denmark)
Heloise Weber (India/Australia)
Martin Weber (Australia)
Peter Vale (South Africa)