International Relations Theory

International Relations theory has been the subject of intense academic, intellectual and political debates. The main aim of this course is to introduce students to the main theoretical trajectories and contending positions that have shaped the discipline of International Relations over the past several decades and the principal theoretical strands that define it today. The course consists in three parts. The first part revisits major theoretical trajectories and the frameworks that have informed scholarship in these traditions. The second part engages in more depth a number of concepts that have been constitutive to the development of IR of today. The third part focuses on the newest discussions around different logics of action in international politics and how to theorise them. Throughout the course we will reflect on the theory-practice nexus to gain a better understanding of the social aspect of the discipline and its scope for political analysis. The overarching motive here is to trace different modalities of the relationship between knowledge and the social order to be able to identify theoretical assumptions that underpin both action in world politics and research practice in the academia.