Doing Historical International Relations

All IR scholars do historical work. Even prognosticators look to the past to project forwards. Nevertheless, the historical awareness of the discipline of International Relations is by and large low, with history being seen as a repository of data, the ultimate settler of scores. In this presentation I want to suggest that IR both could and should do better, and that Historical International Relations (HIR) holds significant critical as well as integrative potential for the discipline. I start out with an autobiographical note about how I came to HIR, and the problems and possibilities of working at the boundaries of disciplines. Then I turn to different approaches to history in IR, with particular focus on constructivism and the challenge of the sources. Finally, I make the argument that HIR has the potential to make IR a more inclusive discipline, both by building bridges within the discipline and by lowering walls against other disciplines.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y2O20arSfs[/youtube]

Speaker: Dr Halvard Leira, Senior Researcher at NUPI
Discussant: Dr Tereza Valny, Historian and New Perspectives Journal Managing Editor
Chair: Dr Benjamin Tallis, New Perspectives Journal Editor-in-Chief

Halvard Leira holds a PhD and a Cand. Polit. (MA) in Political Science from the University of Oslo, and an MSc (distinction) in International Relations from the LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science). He is currently senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). Leira has published extensively in English and Norwegian on historical international relations, international political thought, historiography, foreign policy and diplomacy. His work has appeared in e.g. Review of International Studies, Millennium, Leiden Journal of International Law, International Studies Perspectives, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Global Society and Cooperation and Conflict. Leira has been co-editor of the Scandinavian-language journal Internasjonal Politikk for five years (2007-11, 2013) and co-editor of the Sage Library of International Relations sets International Diplomacy (2013) and Historical International Relations (2015). He is currently section chair of the Historical International Relations Section of the International Studies Association.

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