Prof. Christian Reus-smit1, Professor Robyn Eckersley1, Associate Professor Daniel McCarthy1, Dr Beth Rowan3, Dr Minh Vu3, Dr Jack Shield3
1University Of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia, 2University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia, 3University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia, 4University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia, 5University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia, 6University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
Biography:
Robyn Eckersley is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Melbourne. She has published widely in the fields of environmental political theory and International Relations.
Daniel R. McCarthy is Associate Professor in International Relations at the University of Melbourne. His research interests centre on the politics of technology in International Relations, utopian social theory, and socio-technical imaginaries in American foreign and national security policy.
Christian Reus-Smit is Professor of International Relations at the University of Melbourne. His recent books include International Relations: A Very Short Introduction (2020), and On Cultural Diversity (2018).
Beth Rowan is an ECR in International Relations at the University of Queensland. She is also the Executive Director of Women in International Security- Australia (WIIS-A), and an advisor to the board of the Justice and Accountability Network Australia (JANA).
Jack Shield is an ECR at the University of Queensland. His thesis was an intellectual history of nationalists and their conceptualisations of order. His research interests include nationalism, order, and global (intellectual) history.
Minh Vu in an ECR at the University of Queensland. His major research interests are the relations between International Relations theories, state formation, and nationalism in East Asia.
Abstract:
How humans imagine the social and political universe informs and conditions how they act within that universe. This roundtable explores how diverse imaginaries have worked to shape agency and action in world politics. It explores everything from national imaginaries and forms of utopianism to how the value of different human lives is imagined in the compensation for killing in war. It also examines the conceptual and methodological challenges of studying the political effects of imaginaries.