Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I wanted to share some news from our Section. We recently finalized decisions on the book and paper awards we will hand out in Toronto.  You may find the details about the selection process and results below. I would also like to note some good news regarding our collaborative efforts to advance the goals of our section with the Millennium journal, as well as an issue that is of interest for our section.

—>  Theory Section Awards:

As you know, Theory Section presents section awards for the Best Monograph, Best Edited Volume/Special Issue/Symposium and two awards (at pre-PhD and Post PhD Levels) for papers presented at ISA’s Annual Convention.

This year we had two committees working seperately on the book and paper awards.The committee members working on the monograph and edited volume awards were Asli Calkivik (co-chair), Emma Hutchison (co-chair, recipient of 2017 Best Book Award), Aida Hozic, Russell Kerr and Marta Bashovski.  The committee working on the paper awards was composed of Scott Hamilton (Chair, recipient of 2017 Pre-PhD Paper Award), Ritu Vij, Axel Heck, Joanna de V. Cordeiro and Mark Laffey.I hope that all section members would join me as I take this opportunity to extend a big thank you to all those who served on these committees, spending so much time and energy.

We were pleased to see the number of nominations for the book awards: 37 Nominations for the Best Book Award, 13 nominations for Best Edited Volume/Special Issue/Symposium. One thing to note is that, as a section, we can work harder on urging more nominations for paper awards, encouraging our students and recent graduates to nominate themselves and/or nominating ourselves for paperspresented at the ISA convention.

The committees made their decisions through a two-step process of long-listing and short-listing. The final decisions were based on quantitative and qualitative assessment of feedback from the committee members.

The Theory Section will hand out the following awards in Toronto in 2019:

Best Monograph:

Bartelson, Jens (2018), War in International Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni. Press.

Monograph, Honorable Mention:

Sabaratnam, Meera (2017), Decolonizing Intervention: International State Building in Mozambique, London, New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Best Edited Volume:

Carrozza, Ilaria, Ida Danewid, Evelyn Pauls (Eds.) (2017), “Racialized Realities in World Politics”, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 45(3).

Edited Volume, Honorable Mention:

Zarakol, Ayse (Ed.) (2017) Hierarchies in World Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni. Press.

Paper Awards

Best Pre-PhD Paper Award:

Goettlich, Kerry. “Enclosure and Survey Rationality”

Best Post-PhD Paper Award:

Heath-Kelly, Charlotte. “Survivor Trees and Memorial Groves”

A big congratulations to all of the winners! We would also like to thank all nominated authors and commend the great research in all nominated works. Thank you!

—> Millennium Cooperation

We are very pleased to share that two very promising initiatives launched in collaboration with Millennium: Journal of International Studies are coming to fruition. One of these is the symposium organized around last year’s Theory Section book award recipient (Emma Hutchison’s Affective Communities in World Politics) which will be published soon by Millennium. The special symposium brings together contributions by Benjamin Meiches, Anna Agathangelou, Andrew Ross, and Jessica Auchter, joined by a response by Emma Hutchison and with a forward co-authored by Asli Calkivik and Jessica Auchter. We would like to thank all symposium contributers for their excellent insights as well as Alexander Barder, Daniel Levine and the Volume editors Sarah Bertrand, Kerry Goettlich and Christopher Murray for their contributions in realizing this project.

The second initiative in collaboration with  Millennium is the “’big idea’ Millennium/Theory Section prize for a researcher doing radical, boundary-pushing, or off-beat IR theory”. A $500 prize sponsored by the Millennium will be given to the winner of the pre-PhD paper award winner.

We thank all our friends at the Millennium for their most precious contributions.

—> Sponsorships for the Convention

As a Section, our budget definitely needs a push for covering our expenses (such as our reception at the annual convention) through sponsorships. We need your ideas, suggestions and connections towards reaching out to potential sponsors such as publishing houses to raise our budget. Please contact our treasurer Jason R. Wiedner (at jason.weidner@udem.edu) for details about our budget as well as how we can improve ourselves on the financial front.

Best regards,

Asli Calkivik

ISA Theory Section Chair