DPIR’s Edward Keene jointly awarded prestigious book prize for co-edited book on international relations

Associate Professor of International Relations Edward Keene has been jointly awarded the Joseph Fletcher Prize from the International Studies Association (ISA) for The Oxford Handbook of History and International Relations.

Edward co-edited the book – published by Oxford University Press - with Professor Mlada Bukovansky (Smith College), Professor Christian Reus- Smit (University of Queensland), and Dr Maja Spanu (University of Cambridge).

The groundbreaking volume unites some of the world’s leading historians and IR scholars who have examined the relationship between history and international relations from across the intellectual and methodological spectrum.

Several people with DPIR connections also contributed chapters to the book. Professor of International Relations Laura Sjoberg wrote a chapter on 'Gender, History and IR', while DPIR alumnus and now Associate Professor in Political Theory Dr Musab Younis, penned a chapter on 'The Haitian Revolution'. Contributors Quentin Bruneau, Julia Costa Lopez, and Claire Vergerio wrote their DPhils at Oxford. 

Reviewing the book in the journal International Affairs, Aleksandra Spalińska commented: 

‘This compelling volume opens new avenues for research and encourages readers to explore the problems of modernity and granularity with an awareness of IR's positionality in the process and its implications.’

The citation from the Joseph Fletcher Prize committee said: 

'This is a landmark work for the burgeoning field of Historical IR, which refuses to reify either ‘history’ or ‘international relations’ and insists that the fields have always been intertwined.

‘Organised into sections on ‘Readings’, ‘Practices’, ‘Locales’, and ‘Moment’s’, and with the critical foil of modernity and granularity - different framings in geographical space, historical time, and levels of structure and agency - this Oxford Handbook succeeds in its ambition to both inform readers of the conventional wisdoms about historical IR, and to challenge these or open up new vistas.’ 

Joseph F Fletcher (1934-1984) was a historian who studied the interaction between Islamic, Mongol and Chinese worlds. The annual award recognises the best edited book copyrighted in the previous calendar year on subjects associated with historical international relations.

DPIR’s Professor of International Relations Patricia Owens previously won the award for her book Women’s International Thought: A New History.

An awards presentation will be held at the ISA on Tuesday March 4.