Overview

This timely handbook offers a comprehensive, critical overview of current research on knowledge and expertise in international politics that helps readers navigate the growing literature in the field and explore new research agendas. The handbook is based on a shared understanding that knowledge and expertise matter in politics and that knowledge claims are a form of power warranting critical interrogation. The chapters of Knowledge and Expertise in International Politics take different theoretical starting points to explore the complex relationship between knowledge and politics and investigate whose knowledge matters politically, why, how, and with what effects. The contributions are organized into five perspectives, highlighting the role of actors, practices, contexts, structures, and relations in the (re)production, circulation, and contestation of knowledge. Further chapters explore central knowledge debates and cutting-edge avenues for future research in the International Relations (IR) discipline. The handbook addresses themes such as the ethics and politics of knowing, new technologies, and ways to democratize, decolonize, and pluralize politically relevant knowledge. Bringing insights from different sub-disciplines and policy fields together in one place, Knowledge and Expertise in International Politics consolidates the international politics of knowledge as a new, transdisciplinary paradigm in the discipline, providing numerous points of connection with debates around pressing global challenges. With original theoretical expositions and granular thematic case studies, it is an invaluable companion to all those interested in adopting knowledge and expertise approaches in research, teaching, and policy work.Chapters 1, 16, 27, 45, and 67 of this work are available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International open access licence. These parts of the work are free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Full Product Details

Author:   Berit Bliesemann de Guevara (Professor of International Politics, Professor of International Politics, Aberystwyth University) ,  Katarzyna Kaczmarska (Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Edinburgh) ,  Xymena Kurowska (Associate Professor in International Relations, Associate Professor in International Relations, Central European University) ,  Birgit Poopuu (Associate Professor of International Relations, Associate Professor of International Relations, Tallinn University)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 16.00cm , Height: 6.50cm , Length: 24.00cm
Weight:   1.743kg
ISBN:  

9780192871145

ISBN 10:   0192871145
Pages:   1104
Publication Date:   11 December 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Cynthia Enloe: Foreword 1: Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, Katarzyna Kaczmarska, Xymena Kurowska, Birgit Poopuu, and Andrea Warnecke: Introduction: Studying International Politics Through the Lens of Knowledge and Expertise PART I: KNOWLEDGE DEBATES IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 2: Vineet Thakur: International Politics by Other Means: The Role of the Scholar in IR 3: Beate Jahn: International Relations Knowledge and Practice: The Crisis of Critical Theory? 4: Kimberly Hutchings: Gender and Knowledge (Re)Production in International Thought 5: David L. Blaney and Arlene B. Tickner: Worlding and Worlds 6: Dagmar Vorlíček: Science and International Relations: Knowing and Making the International 7: Matthias Gross: Not Knowing as Expertise: Knowledge and the Politics of Ignorance 8: Werner Distler and Mariam Salehi: Knowing Violence in International Politics 9: Ingvild Bode and Hendrik Huelss: 'Artificial Intelligence' and the Production of Knowledge and Expertise in International Relations 10: Audrey Alejandro: Studying Knowledge: An Analytical Guide for International Politics 11: Siddharth Tripathi: Coloniality of Knowledge (Re)Production: Individual Entanglements and Collective Solidarities in Epistemic North-South Relationships PART II: ACTOR-CENTRED APPROACHES 12: Andrea Warnecke and Berit Bliesemann de Guevara: Actor-Centred Approaches to Knowledge and Expertise in International Politics 13: Katharina Glaab and Nele Kortendiek: The Politics of Knowledge Production in International Organizations 14: Mikkel Jarle Christensen and Mikael Rask Madsen: Legal Knowledge and Expertise in International Politics 15: Andrea Warnecke: Informal Ties and Expertise in Global Crisis Governance: An Exploration of Network Methodologies 16: Roland Kostić and Berit Bliesemann de Guevara: Intimate Networks and Strategic Knowledge in Peacebuilding Interventions 17: Šárka Waisová: Deep Co-Production of Human Security at the Science-Politics Nexus 18: Justyna Bandola-Gill: Quantified Expertise: Connecting Science and Politics in Global Governance 19: Rolf Lidskog and Göran Sundqvist: From Product to Process: Science and the Making of International Environmental Governance PART III: PRACTICE APPROACHES 20: Berit Bliesemann de Guevara and Andrea Warnecke: Practice Approaches to Knowledge and Expertise in International Politics 21: Trine Villumsen Berling: The Embedded Study of International Knowledge Practices: Towards a Methodology of Ironic Immersion 22: Janice Gross Stein: Thinking, Feeling, and Choosing: Pragmatism, Political Psychology, and the Intelligence Community 23: Saara Särmä and Juha A. Vuori: Arts-Based Methods in IR: What Knowledges Become Possible 24: Annabelle Littoz-Monnet: The Co-Production of Expertise in Global Governance 25: Christine Andrä: Producing Knowledge to Problematize War: A Foucauldian Approach to Knowledge Practices 26: María Fernanda Olarte-Sierra: Forensic Experts and Knowledge Practices in Transitional Justice Scenarios 27: Rocco Bellanova and Linda Monsees: Algorithmic Knowledge and International Politics 28: Maria Martin de Almagro: Assembling Knowledge Through Pilot Projects and Massive Open Online Courses in International Policymaking 29: Jan-Peter Voß: Instrument Constituencies and Spaces of Knowing Governance 30: Nikolas Kosmatopoulos and Chloe Nasr: War and Peace: Techno-Political Assemblages in the Postcolonial Middle East PART IV: CONTEXT-CENTRED APPROACHES 31: Katarzyna Kaczmarska: Context-Centred Approaches to Knowledge and Expertise in International Politics 32: Beverley Loke and Catherine Owen: Hierarchies and Contexts in International Relations Knowledge Production 33: Yong-Soo Eun: A Broadening of International Relations: Knowledge Production Beyond West-Centrism 34: Cai Wilkinson: Queer Knowing and Knowledge: The Case of Queer IR 35: Christian Reus-Smit: The Problem with Cultural Contexts 36: Katarzyna Kaczmarska: Academic Freedom and the Contexts of Knowledge Production 37: Martin Müller and Alexandra Yatsyk: The Global Easts in the Geopolitics of Knowledge: The Decolonial Imperative 38: Paulo Ravecca and Camilo López Burian: The Politics of International Relations: Glimpses from Chile and Uruguay 39: Ari Jerrems, Mariela Cuadro, and Melody Fonseca: The Everyday Practices of Making a Global Discipline 40: Beatrix Futak-Campbell: Creating a Global International Relations Section at the International Studies Association 41: Alexander Ruser: Experts and Public Trust in the Policy Field of Climate Change PART V: STRUCTURAL APPROACHES 42: Birgit Poopuu and Xymena Kurowska: Structural Approaches to Knowledge and Expertise in International Politics 43: Birgit Poopuu, Elisabeth Schweiger, and Elena Simon: The Violens in International Relations: Can We Produce Knowledge Differently? 44: Luis Aue: Knowledge Regimes and the Postcolonial Hierarchies of International Health Quantification 45: Claudia Aradau, Lucrezia Canzutti, and Sarah Perret: Regimes of Power/Non-Knowledge in Global Politics 46: Victor Anas and Suda Perera: Experts in Conflict: Having Been There but Not Being From There 47: Jamie J. Hagen, Anupama Ranawana, and Emma Pritchard: Queering Humanitarian Response Through LGBTIQ People's Expertise 48: Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Laurence Cox: Social Movements and Insurgent Social Theory: Making Theoretical Knowledge Through Collective Action 49: Michael Merlingen: EU Foreign Policy Ideas as International Relations of Domination: A Neo-Gramscian Perspective 50: Gloria Novović: Poverty, Inequality, and Knowledge in Development Politics PART VI: RELATIONAL APPROACHES 51: Xymena Kurowska and Birgit Poopuu: Relational Approaches to Knowledge and Expertise in International Politics 52: Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Sujin Heo: Ways of Knowing: A Relational Account 53: Emilian Kavalski: Relationality with Asian Characteristics? Healing the Columbus Syndrome of International Relations 54: Emma Mc Cluskey: Anthropological Approaches to Knowledge in International Politics 55: Alistair Markland: Fielding Knowledge: The Problematic Case of Human Rights Advocacy and Genocide Labelling 56: Anna Danielsson: Field Methodology and the Relational Emergence of an 'Interventionary Object' 57: Linda Åhäll: Being as a Mode of Knowing: Feminist Knowledge on Affect 58: Aytak Dibavar: Transnational Feminist Solidarity: Story as a Relational Approach to Knowledge Production 59: Erika Cudworth and Stephen Hobden: Complexity Thinking, Posthumanism, and International Relations Knowledge 60: Amaya Querejazu: Pluriversal Knowledge and Shamans: The Aymara Yatiris as Knowers and Diplomats PART VII: DISRUPTIONS AND MEDITATIONS 61: Milja Kurki: Cosmologies, Sciences, Planetary Politics: Reflections on 'Knowledge' in New Registers 62: Jonathan Luke Austin and Anna Leander: The Future of Academic Expertise: Speculative European Bureaucratic Fabulations 63: Amal Abu-Bakare: Racism and Racialization in International Relations Knowledge 64: Toni Čerkez, James Finnis, Milja Kurki, Helen Miles, and Joseph Thurgate: Reflections on Imagination of Future and AI 65: Thomas Fetzer, Xymena Kurowska, and Kateryna Zarembo: Hermeneutical Ignorance and 'Strong Objectivity' in Knowledge Production about the Russo-Ukrainian War 66: Philip Conway: The Necessity of Being Negative: Critique and Care in the Anthropocene 67: Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, Katarzyna Kaczmarska, Xymena Kurowska, Birgit Poopuu, and Andrea Warnecke: Creating Knowledge by Editing a Handbook: A Self-Critical Reflection

Reviews

This superbly conceived and masterfully executed Handbook is a must-read for every scholar and student of International Relations with any serious concern for how knowledge is gained, curated, contested, and deployed in the conflicting worlds of international thought, practice, and action. That this is the new state of the art in the social and political epistemology of international politics brings the exhilarating and comforting realisation that we have, at last, forged a homegrown self-knowledge fit for the realities and challenges of the twenty-first century. * Inanna Hamati-Ataya, Chair of Global International Relations, University of Groningen * Knowledge and expertise transform our worlds and drive global politics. This luminous handbook shows us how. Carefully curated and panoramic in scope, its chapters provide a concise overview of key theoretical perspectives, empirical results, and methodological frontiers across fields. Essential reading for anyone seeking fresh perspectives on how knowledge shapes the future of international relations. * Christian Bueger, Professor of International Relations, University of Copenhagen * This Handbook on 'Knowledge and Expertise in International Politics' offers a powerful reflection on knowledge, and the production of knowledge, from a diversity of theoretical and methodological commitments. From the role of the scholar to the crisis of theory to the politics of ignorance and covering individual, institutional, and global entanglements, this Handbook is necessary reading for all those interested in questions of epistemology, power, and expertise in International Politics. * Gurminder K. Bhambra, Professor of Historical Sociology, University of Sussex * This excellent volume brings together the state of the art in critical engagement with the problem of knowledge and expertise in international politics. This question has been at the centre of efforts to make IR a more worldly and democratic field, and we should be training all our students to understand and engage this problem in depth. This indispensable resource showcases an outstanding roster of influential authors from around the world, enabling readers to master this fascinating and complex area of research. * Meera Sabaratnam, Associate Professor in International Relations, University of Oxford * This is a brilliantly curated selection of contributions, providing the definitive guide to scholarship on the international politics of knowledge. It deftly integrates insights from across diverse methodological and theoretical perspectives, to provide an essential companion to anyone interested in the 'epistemic turn' in international relations. * Christina Boswell, Professor of Politics, University of Edinburgh *

Author Information

Berit Bliesemann de Guevara is Professor of International Politics and Co-Founder of the Centre for the International Politics of Knowledge at Aberystwyth University. She has been the principal investigator and co-investigator of projects studying the role of knowledge and expertise in and after violent conflict in Colombia and Myanmar and of international research networks on knowledge in conflict, funded by UK and German research councils. Katarzyna Kaczmarska is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests centre on knowledge construction among scholars and practitioners of international politics, the theory and practice of academic freedom, and post-Soviet politics, as well as the ways in which socio-political contexts influence academic knowledge-making and use. She is the author of Making Global Knowledge in Local Contexts (Routledge, 2020). Xymena Kurowska is Associate Professor in International Relations at Central European University in Vienna. She received her doctorate in political and social sciences from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and works within International Political Sociology, using social and security theory, psychosocial and anthropological approaches, and relational and interpretive methodologies. Birgit Poopuu is Associate Professor of International Relations and co-director of the Central and Eastern European Security Hub (CEESHub) at Tallinn University's School of Governance, Law, and Society. Her research is curious about the role of radical and nonviolent knowledge and experience within international politics, with a focus on feminist and decolonial approaches to peace and conflict studies. She is the Principal Investigator of the European Horizon Twinning grant ""A critical relational perspective on peace & security in CEE"". Andrea Warnecke is Assistant Professor in History and International Studies at Leiden University's Institute for History. She holds a PhD in political and social sciences from the European University Institute, Florence. Her research on the practices of international organizations in peace and conflict is informed by several years of experience as a senior researcher and consultant on conflict, peacebuilding, and migration in think tanks, NGOs, and on behalf of government agencies and international organizations.

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