Reseach Groups: International Relations

The Department has a distinctive approach to International Relations that consciously seeks to integrate theory with a concern for questions of development and a broad range of regional expertise. We have particular interests in understanding how global processes present opportunities for different kinds of global action, as well as constraining and re-making states.

Members of staff contribute to contemporary debates about the changing international arena, globalisation, governance and development, as well as questions about security, foreign policy, gender and regionalism.

Research Projects

Security and Foreign Policy

Rhiannon Vickers works in the area of Cold War studies. Her book Manipulating Hegemony (Macmillan 2000), studied the impact of the Marshall Plan on Britain but also displayed her interest in the nature of British foreign policy under different Labour Governments. She is completing the second volume of her major study entitled Labour Party and the World, (vol.1 Manchester UP, 2005), and she has contributed to articles and books on British foreign policy and the Iraq War. Her next project will be on a comparative study of public diplomacy in the Information Age.

Katharine Adeney works on issues of security, democracy, identity, ethnic conflict and violence in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Her book Federalism and Ethnic Conflict Regulation in India and Pakistan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) examined the relationship between institutional structures and the creation of ethnic tensions. She is currently examining the relationship between Pakistan´s chequered democratic history and the regionalist movements that have emerged.

Democratisation

The study of democratisation is the core of the work of Graham Harrison who is an expert on the politics of Mozambique. He has published several articles on democratisation and politics in Mozambique and he is currently widening his research through the publication of a book Challenges and Liberations in Contemporary African Politics.

Jean Grugel has developed her account of transnationalism and democracy in the edited collection Democracy without Borders. She has written extensively on democratisation, including its regional and international dimensions. She is the author of Democratisation. She is currently undertaking research on rights and advocacy in Latin America; governance after financial crisis; regionalism, citizenship and social movements in comparative perspective; and children´s rights.

Development

Matt Bishop's immediate research focuses on development in the Eastern Caribbean and more broadly on other areas of debates in Development Studies, IR, IPE and small states in the international system. He is currently working on a number of projects, among them the impact of EU development policy in the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean, CARICOM and regional governance and the politics of the EU-Caribbean Economic Partnership Agreement.

Tony Payne is author of The Global Politics of Development and Editor of The Regional Politics of Development as well as author of several leading articles on a new political economy of area studies. Tony Payne has also written on the making of the 'Caribbean America' a project carried out under the auspices of an ESRC grant.

Georgina Waylen is the author of Gender in Third World Politics and Co-Editor of Gender, Politics and the State. She continues to work on the process of democratisation in Latin America through an ESRC funded project. She will shortly be completing her work entitled Engendering Transitions.

Tony Heron´s research interests are situated at the interface of International/Comparative Political Economy and Development Studies. He has a particular, ongoing interest in the politics of international trade, aid and development. Tony is currently working on a three-year ESRC project on the global politics of economic liberalisation, adjustment and capacity building in small, preference- dependent states.

Global Governance

Garrett Brown is working, among other things, on a project that is currently funding five research teams around the world (South Africa, Lesotho, Madagascar, Peru and Malawi) to study aspects of the links between economic globalization, pro-poor growth and HIV/AIDS vulnerability. These studies are all underway and the first research symposium is in Durban from January 26-27, 2009 to share insights and discuss challenges. His role is to help design a theoretical framework to link the various case study projects together.

Valbona Muzaka researches on the theory and practice of global governance issues and the role of state and non-state transnational actors in global governance. She is currently working on a number of articles that explore some of these issues as well as on a book that the strategies and outcomes of the complex, multifaceted contests between state and non-state actors around the inherent tensions in the intersection between trade, intellectual property rules and public health policies.

Tony Heron´s research focuses on the theory and practice of global economic governance, especially in relation to the World Trade Organisation. Tony is interested in the twin themes of legalisation and policy coordination within global governance organisations, particularly as related to the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries which have relied historically on unilateral and non-reciprocal trade and aid preferences.