The Duck of Minerva

Annick T.R. Wibben

Annick T.R. Wibben is an Associate Professor at the University of San Francisco. Her research straddles critical & feminist security studies, international theory, and (feminist) international relations. She also has a keen interest in methodology, representation, and narrative.

Recent Posts

Whose Academy Is It Anyway?

by Annick T.R. Wibben | 16 May, 2016 | , ,

Recently there has been a lot of talk about one of those issues academics (at least in the U.S.) obsess about: how to get tenure and the job security as well as license to (supposedly) speak truth to power that comes with it. This round of conversations started when Stephen Walt gave some, rather generic, advice in his Foreign Policy piece "How to Get Tenure". As a long-time professor at Harvard, Walt certainly has experience - but with a very particular kind of (highly privileged) institution and hence, while not wrong per se, his advice certainly is limited in a number of ways. One such...

read more

Interested in critical international politics?

by Annick T.R. Wibben | 29 January, 2016 | ,

The Gregynog Ideas Lab, a thinking space for scholars interested in studying global politics from a range of critical, postcolonial, feminist, post-structural and psychoanalytic traditions, takes place every summer at Gregynog Hall in mid-Wales (UK). This unusual summer school offers a set of seminars & workshops, an artist-in-residence, methods training and one-on-one consultations to allow graduate students and established scholars to re-examine their own work, participate in ongoing conversations and meet new people who share an interest in critical international politics....

read more

How stories matter: Thoughts on contextuality, temporality, reflexivity & certainty

by Annick T.R. Wibben | 29 December, 2015 | , , ,

In early September, the circulation of the now iconic picture of Alan Kurdi, the little Syrian Kurdish boy who drowned along with his mother and brother in the attempt to cross the Aegean Sea, prompted me to write a post reflecting on what 'we' as academics might do. I argued that we could, possibly, use "our knowledge of global affairs to connect the dots and lay bare how Alan's story" is emblematic of so many themes we touch upon in our research - and indeed, the moment created by the (ethically difficult) circulation of the picture became an opening to provide depth and nuance for those...

read more

On doing ‘something’ … as academics

by Annick T.R. Wibben | 3 September, 2015 | , , ,

Yesterday the picture of little Alan (previously identified as Aylan), lying dead in the sand on the shores of the Mediterranean, circled the world. It provoked strong reactions from those who 'witnessed' his death in this manner and, not unlike the debates following some of the images shared after 9/11 (I wrote about that then), people questioned the ethics of sharing the images particularly without warning (see replies by some who shared here, here & here and note that his father wants the image to be shared if it can provoke action). Indeed, it was  this tweet from fellow Duck Megan...

read more

#BringBackOurGirls, Feminist Solidarity & Intervention – Part Two

by Annick T.R. Wibben | 21 August, 2015 | , , ,

My first post on the Duck focused on the emergence of the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag and campaign, pointing also to the ease with which hashtags can get appropriated and campaigns derailed. Yesterday, #BringBackOurGirls Nigeria (@BBOG_Nigeria on twitter) started a one week campaign to mark 500 days since the abduction. Given the continuation of the campaign, in today's post I want to dig a bit deeper in examining the urge to do "something": Why do some events capture our attention while others fail to produce any kind of reaction? What kind of reactions are helpful? And - for whom? The...

read more

#BringBackOurGirls, Feminist Solidarity and Intervention – Part One

by Annick T.R. Wibben | 23 July, 2015 | , , ,

As a new Duck, who (like Cai & Tom) took a while to consider what to blog about, I finally decided - long-winded academic that I am - to write a series of posts on the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag campaign. To this end, I draw on materials for a keynote I  just delivered at the University of Surrey's Center for International Intervention's conference on "Narratives of Intervention: Perspectives from North and South" (#cii2015). Here I go: On April 14, 2014, 276 girls between the ages of 15-18 years were abducted from a school in Chibok, Northern Nigeria, days before they were set to take...

read more