<strong>The IR thinker </strong>features in-depth interviews with leading experts in international relations. <strong>The IR thinker </strong>is an independent, non-partisan and non-aligned platform. It hosts a wide range of perspectives on international relations but does not endorse any political party, government or ideological position. Since its first episode in 2023, <strong>The IR thinker</strong> has produced more than 100 episodes as a pro bono initiative established by Martin Zubko, an international relations scholar and lecturer. Available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music.<hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
IR thinker
Claim This Podcastby Martin Zubko
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Podcast Overview
<strong>The IR thinker </strong>features in-depth interviews with leading experts in international relations. <strong>The IR thinker </strong>is an independent, non-partisan and non-aligned platform. It hosts a wide range of perspectives on international relations but does not endorse any political party, government or ideological position. Since its first episode in 2023, <strong>The IR thinker</strong> has produced more than 100 episodes as a pro bono initiative established by Martin Zubko, an international relations scholar and lecturer. Available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music.<hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
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Publishing Since
1/5/2023
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Recent Episodes
July 1, 2026
Racism Without the Word — Somdeep Sen
<p>After 9/11, the word "terrorism" replaced older colonial vocabularies — but the racial logic underneath stayed intact. Dr Somdeep Sen of Roskilde University joins The IR thinker to show how concepts such as development, security, and the War on Terror continue to sort the world along racial lines, even when race itself goes unnamed. From NATO's global colour line to China's reproduction of Western hierarchies within the Global South, this conversation maps the hidden architecture of race in contemporary IR.</p><p><br></p><h2>Somdeep Sen</h2><p>Dr Sen is Associate Professor in International Development Studies at Roskilde University, whose research explores race and racism in international relations, settler colonialism, liberation movements, and postcolonial theory.</p><br><p>Publications</p><br><p><a href="https://collegepublishing.sagepub.com/products/concepts-in-international-relations-1-286627" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Race (Chapter 9)</a></p><br><p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae012" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">NATO and the global colour line</a></p><br><p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-international-studies/issue/9118BE400C1A6155559A09B47F9C8EDE" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Decolonising to Reimagine International Relations</a></p><br><p><a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429317873-6" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">A Postcolonial Critique of EU-Middle East Relations</a></p><br><p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.666" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Race, Racism, and the Teaching of International Relations</a></p><br><p><strong>Content</strong></p><p>00:00 - Introduction</p><p>02:34 - How IR Erased Race — Deliberately and Systematically</p><p>07:09 - Why "sanitised" Language Still Encodes Racial Hierarchy</p><p>10:11 - Race Beyond the North–South Divide</p><p>15:15 - How Racial Logic Travels Across Regions and Contexts</p><p>19:02 - Terrorism, Security, and the Racialisation of Threat</p><p>28:15 - Western Imagination of the Middle East Before and After 9/11</p><p>34:21 - Why Race Scholarship From the Middle East Gets Overlooked</p><p>40:00 - Brexit, English Nationalism, and the Return of Racial Politics</p><p>45:32 - What Decolonising IR Actually Requires</p><p>47:59 - China as a Non-Western Power Reproducing Racial Hierarchies</p><p>51:10 - Intra-Southern Hierarchies and Who Gets to Speak for the Global South</p><p>53:41 - How to Research Race When Race Goes Unspoken</p><p>58:21 - Underresearched Areas and Future Directions</p><br><p><strong>Follow & Further Resources</strong></p><p>Substack: <a href="https://theirthinker.substack.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://theirthinker.substack.com/</a></p><p>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/ir-thinker/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/company/ir-thinker/</a></p><p>X: <a href="https://x.com/irthinker_" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://x.com/irthinker_</a></p><p>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theirthinker/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.instagram.com/theirthinker/</a></p><p>Bluesky: <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/theirthinker.bsky.social" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://bsky.app/profile/theirthinker.bsky.social</a></p><p>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/irthinkerfb" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/irthinkerfb</a></p><p><br></p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
June 23, 2026
When AI Fights, the War Never Ends — Myriam Dunn Cavelty
<p>Artificial intelligence is redrawing the boundaries of cybersecurity — accelerating attacks, complicating attribution, and compressing the time humans have to make decisions that matter. </p><br><p>In this episode, Myriam Dunn Cavelty of ETH Zurich examines AI-driven conflict, the politics behind critical infrastructure protection, the limits of European governance, and what it means when cyber war has no clear start and no clear finish.</p><br><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>Myriam Dunn Cavelty</h2><p><a href="https://css.ethz.ch/en/center/people/dunn-cavelty-myriam.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Myriam Dunn Cavelty</strong></a><strong> </strong>is a Senior Scientist at the Centre for Security Studies at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Her research examines the political and societal implications of digital technologies, with a particular focus on cyber security, cyber warfare, critical infrastructure protection, and technology governance. She also serves as co-editor-in-chief of Contemporary Security Policy.</p><br><p>Publications</p><p><a href="https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/100/6/2317/7852699" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The evolution of cyberconflict studies</a></p><p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Politics-of-Cyber-Security/DunnCavelty/p/book/9780367895983" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The politics of cyber security</a></p><p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Cyber-Security-Politics-Socio-Technological-Transformations-and-Political-Fragmentation/DunnCavelty-Wenger/p/book/9780367626648" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cyber security politics: Socio-technological transformations and political fragmentation</a></p><p><a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-10620-5" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cybersecurity in Switzerland</a></p><p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Cyber-Security-and-Threat-Politics-US-Efforts-to-Secure-the-Information-Age/Dunn/p/book/9780415569880" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cyber-security and threat politics: US efforts to secure the information age</a></p><br><p>Recommended article:</p><p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2011.608939" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cyber War Will Not Take Place</a></p><br><p><strong>Content</strong></p><p>00:00 - Introduction</p><p>01:55 - What Actually Counts as Critical Infrastructure in the Age of AI?</p><p>07:58 - ENISA: Europe's Cybersecurity Watchdog — Triumphs, Failures, and Missed Opportunities</p><p>13:00 - Does the World Need a Global Cybersecurity Regulator?</p><p>14:43 - Hacked Nations: Geopolitical Coercion, Hybrid Warfare, and Strategic Signalling</p><p>25:48 - Is Cybersecurity a Political Problem Dressed Up as a Technical One?</p><p>32:31 - War Without End: Why AI-Driven Conflict Has No Clear Start, No Clear Finish</p><p>38:27 - Who Did It? The Dangerous Art of Attribution in Cyber Warfare</p><p>43:58 - The Speed Problem: When AI Makes Decisions Faster Than Humans Can Think</p><p>48:33 - Arming the Enemy: What Happens When Open-Source AI Falls Into the Wrong Hands?</p><p>52:00 - Measuring the Unmeasurable: How Do You Rank a Country's Cyber Power?</p><p>58:27 - The Blind Spots of AI Cybersecurity Research Topics</p><br><p><strong>Follow & Further Resources</strong></p><p>Substack: <a href="https://theirthinker.substack.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://theirthinker.substack.com/</a></p><p>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/ir-thinker/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/company/ir-thinker/</a></p><p>X: <a href="https://x.com/irthinker_" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://x.com/irthinker_</a></p><p>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theirthinker/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.instagram.com/theirthinker/</a></p><p>Bluesky: <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/theirthinker.bsky.social" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://bsky.app/profile/theirthinker.bsky.social</a></p><p>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/irthinkerfb" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/irthinkerfb</a></p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
June 16, 2026
African Affairs - Jonathan Fisher | Ep. 17 (2026)
<p>Today, it is a real pleasure to speak with Professor Jonathan Fisher, co-editor of<a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> <strong>African Affairs</strong></a> — one of the leading journals in the field of African Studies. African Affairs is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the London-based <a href="https://royalafricansociety.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Royal African Society</strong></a>.</p><br><p>It was established as the Journal of the African Society in 1901, then it was published as the Journal of the Royal African Society from 1936 until it obtained its current name in 1944.</p><br><p>The journal is broadly interdisciplinary, with a primary focus on the politics and international relations of sub-Saharan Africa, though it also draws on sociology, anthropology, economics, history, literature, and the arts where these illuminate debates on contemporary Africa.</p><br><p><strong>Co-Editors</strong></p><p>George M. Bob-Milliar</p><p>Jonathan Fisher</p><p>Amanda Lea Robinson</p><p>Gabrielle Lynch</p><br><p>Impact Factor: 2.2 / 5-Year Impact Factor: 2.7</p><p>Indexed: Scopus / Web of Science</p><p><br></p><h2>Jonathan Fisher</h2><p><br></p><p><a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/gov/fisher-jonathan" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Jonathan Fisher</strong></a> is Professor of Global Security at the University of Birmingham where he also serves as Deputy Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer for the College of Social Sciences.</p><br><p>His research centres on the role of ideas and legitimacy within authoritarian systems, with extensive fieldwork across eastern Africa, where his work has examined how guerrilla heritage shapes contemporary governance, conflict, and cooperation, as well as the growing phenomenon of digital authoritarianism.</p><br><p>Content</p><p>00:00 – Introduction</p><p>01:41 – The Journal’s Evolving Mission and Research Identity</p><p>08:00 – Balancing Intellectual Coherence with Disciplinary Diversity</p><p>11:19 – The Place of Empirical and Theoretical Research in Submissions</p><p>13:03 – Emerging Trends in Manuscripts and Desired Research Directions</p><p>16:27 – Underexplored Regions and Research Gaps across Africa</p><p>18:40 – Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed-Methods Approaches in Publication</p><p>24:04 – The Most Frequent Mistakes in Article Submissions</p><p>25:49 – Common Pitfalls for Early-Career Researchers</p><p>27:26 – Structural and Technical Weaknesses in Academic Articles</p><p>29:00 – The Impact of AI on Editorial and Peer-Review Processes</p><p>31:30 – Editorial Reforms and the Journal’s Growing Academic Standing</p><p>33:46 – The Role and Significance of the Editorial Board</p><p>37:14 – Supporting Marginalised and Underrepresented Scholars</p><p>40:37 – Contributions from Latin America, Asia, and China</p><p>41:57 – Does the Journal Encourage Authors to Suggest Reviewers?</p><p>42:43 – Future Vision, Priorities, and Strategic Goals of the Journal</p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
126 total episodes available
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