Jan Eijking wins European International Studies Association’s Best Graduate Paper 2021

DPIR DPhil student Jan Eijking has won a top award for his paper on the history of the making of the Suez Canal.

Jan’s article - Intervention from nowhere: Technocratic internationalism and the Suez Canal, 1856-81 - was named the winner of the European International Studies Association’s (EISA)  Best Graduate Paper 2021.

Jan is entering the third year of his DPhil in International Relations and is also an Associate Member of the Centre for Global Knowledge Studies at the University of Cambridge.

He is broadly interested in how historical claims to international authority are generated, maintained, and contested

His paper is based on a chapter from his DPhil and sheds light on how the canal project was justified by securing technical expert approval, so claiming to be non-political in character.

The EISA committee commented that the ‘….well written and argued paper…..offers an excellent historization of the Suez Canal by unmasking the empire-system logics, assumptions and hierarchies that shaped the politics around the Canal as unproblematic aspects of efficient governance.’

Jan said: “It’s an honour to receive this award. I’m grateful to the committee and EISA, but also to support from my supervisor as well as fellow students at the Seminar in the History of International Politics here in Oxford.”

The Best Graduate Paper Award recognises and supports the contribution of PhD students to the development of the field of International Relations.