The Duck of Minerva

This is a guest post by Lahoma Thomas, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. This piece on reflexivity and positionality emerged from a panel she organized at APSA 2016, titled: “Race in the Field: Understanding How Identity Frames Field Research”and has evolved as one of her primary research agendas. Follow her on Twitter at @LAHOMAthomas. The issues of reflexivity and positionality have been prominent features of my academic career, especially throughout my doctoral studies in political science. Reflexivity entails a critical reflection...

I have had trouble blogging this past year. It's a challenge to think about academically informed observations on contemporary global politics when the world is in some places literally on fire and democracy appears to be in retreat. From a normative standpoint, it's been a hard thing to step back from with some sense of analytical detachment that blogging on this platform typically requires. In a special section of PS last year, I wrote about how to deal with these times on social media. In addition to blogging, I sought on social media to engage folks who thought differently from me about...

This is a guest post from Jonathan D. Caverley, Associate Professor at the Naval War College and Research Scientist at MIT, and Monica Duffy Toft, Professor at Tufts University, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The program for the 2019 International Studies Association (ISA) meeting has been released, and International Relations Twitter has feelings about it. The stakes of inclusion on the program are not small. Presenting a paper at ISA is frequently an essential step towards publication in the field’s refereed journals, these meetings provide valuable networking space, travel funds...

The school year is off to a great start, and we wanted to thank our previous slate of guest Ducks and welcome some new guests. Thanks to all of our guests from last year. Lisa Gaufman and Dillon Tatum are staying on as guests, and we are delighted that our partnership with Bridging the Gap will continue with the BtG channel. We also have a fantastic slate of new guests Ducks including Jill Hazelton, Peter Henne, Sahar Khan,  Luke Perez, and Kai Thaler.  We have a strong slate of security-minded guests this year. They cover a range of topics from counterinsurgency to religion and the Middle...

The fall semester is upon us, and with APSA in the rear view window, we’d like to bring on a new slate of guest Duck bloggers to continue to bring IR-related insights to bear on important real world problems, to explore important debates in the academy, and to do some professional introspection. We’re especially keen on having gender balance and increasing representation of voices from beyond North America and other important perspectives. Here is the general policy for guests and our wider set of policies (such as they are). Guest Bloggers: Guest Bloggers get posting privileges for a period...

This is a guest post by Andreas Pacher who initiated the Observatory of International Relations (OOIR), a website which tracks Political Science and IR journals to continually list their latest papers. Follow OOIR on Twitter: @ObserveIR. You may have noticed that the Impact Factors of IR journals are sometimes followed by a statement that it ranks “nth out of 85 journals in the category ‘International Relations’”. For instance, International Organization ranks “1st out of 85 journals in the category ‘International Relations’”, while Alternatives ranks “76 out of 85 journals in the category...

Tis the season for academic navel gazing so here are some things I've learned the hard way. This is primarily a piece for folks on the tenure track. I know that I come at this from a position of immense privilege as a tenured professor at an R1, layered by being a white guy. I know that some of the advice I'm going to give won't be all that helpful to folks in more vulnerable positions as adjunct faculty, but I still think this advice needs to be said for new tenure track faculty. I hope others find it useful. Jealously Guard Your Time You are low man or woman on the totem pole. There will...