Job market candidates 2024 - Subfield: International Relations

My research explores the history of Anglo-American fascist international thought during the interwar period through to the mid-twentieth century. I am particularly concerned with ideas of fascist internationalism and recovering intersections between far-right actors and the disciplinary history of International Relations and political science. Beyond my doctoral dissertation, my research also encompasses contemporary forms of far-right extremism and conspiracy theories.

College: St Antony’s College

Thesis Title: Mythologising the Ultra-Nation, Theorising the International: Anglo-American Fascist International Thought and the Disciplinary History of International Relations

Supervisor: Edward Keene

Key Publications:

2023. "Why is There No History of Fascist International Thought?" Millennium

2023. "'A Pro-Fascist English Lady': The International Thought of Muriel Innes Currey," Global Studies Quarterly

 2022. "An Anarchical Society (of Fascist States): Theorising Illiberal Solidarism," Review of International Studies

I study the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to trigger a world war and how to prevent that from happening. My work focuses on the theory and history of political negotiations that take place in the shadow of violence. As a social scientist, my strongest methodological areas are formal theory, quantitative analysis, and process tracing. Furthermore, I draw heavily on my background in the natural and formal sciences, with a particular emphasis on machine learning, semiconductors, cryptography, and nuclear science. Previously, I spent a decade working for Silicon Valley startups as a software engineer and manager.

College: St John’s College

Thesis title: Strategic Implications of Radically Transformative Technologies

Supervisor: Ranjit Lall

Key publications:

Robert Trager, Ben Harack, Anka Reuel, et al. International Governance of Civilian AI: A Jurisdictional Certification Approach.

I am a Swire Scholar and final year PhD candidate in International Relations, based at the Department of Politics and International Relations, and a DPhil Associate in China Studies at the China Centre, University of Oxford. I am a scholar of critical IR theory building and Chinese foreign policy. My research interests include critical IR theories, postcolonialism, feminism, critical security studies, and China studies. I have supervised two B.A. dissertations in Chinese Studies on Chinese foreign policy and have been teaching tutorials for International Relations core, Politics in China, and International Relations in the Era of the Cold War, at the University of Oxford. Previously, I served as the part-time lecturer at Ruskin College, where I lectured on Theories of International Relations and convened another course, Politics of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Aside from researching and teaching, I offer gender mainstreaming consultancy on developing countries’ sustainable industrial transformation for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.

College: St Antony’s College 

Supervisor: Professor Todd Hall

Thesis title (Monograph): The People’s Republic of China’s Discourses on Africa in the 21st century: Modernity, Racial Hierarchies and Global Identity Making 

Key publications:

• Yang Han, “Is Chinese IR Scholarship White?: Towards a Non-Dichotomous Critique of Epistemic Whiteness”, Millennium Journal of International Studies, Forthcoming
• Yang Han, “Norm Entrepreneurship at the UN: Addressing Racial Equality Across Borders and the South-North Divide”, Forthcoming, In Mohsen Al Attar, Claire Smith, Emancipating International Law: Confronting the Violence of Racialised Boundaries, Oxford University Press, Forthcoming