CIAO DATE: 03/02

(Re)Constructing Constructivist International Relations Research

October 2001

The Center for International Studies University of Southern California

Panel One:
Hayward Alker, School of International Relations, USC (Moderator)
"Legal-Historical Rule-Based Approaches to Constructivist IR Research"
Nicholas Onuf, Florida International University
Wayne Sandholtz, UC Irvine

Panel Two:
Robert English, School of International Relations, USC (Moderator)
"Social Historical Constructivism"
Cecelia Lynch, UC Irvine
Daniel Lynch, USC

Panel Three:
J. Ann Tickner, Director Center for International Studies & Professor School of International Relations, USC (Moderator)
"Social Historical Constructivism II"
Raymond Duvall, University of Minnesota
Colin Wight, University of Wales, Aberystwyth

Panel Four:
Saori Katada, School of International Relations, USC (Moderator)
"Computationally Oriented Approaches"
Steven Majeski, University of Washington
Hayward Alker, USC

Workshop Participants:

Hayward Alker is the John A. McCone Professor of International Relations with the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. He has just completed a project on the development of information resources for anticipating, preventing, managing violent inter-group conflict and interstate conflicts around the world. He is now working on a project reviewing major debates about world order in the 20th century. He is the author of Rediscoveries and Reformulations: Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies Cambridge University Press and an edited volume entitled Journeys Through Conflict: Narratives and Lessons Rowman and Littlefield (2001) as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters.

Raymond Duvall is a Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science, the Associate Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change of which the Mac Arthur Inter-Disciplinary Program on Peace and International Cooperation at the University of Minnesota is a part. He was a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He is the co-editor of Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger University of Minnesota Press (1999). He has published numerous articles in journals such as American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly and Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Cecelia Lynch is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. Her experience is in international relations theory, social movements, political philosophy, ethics, and international organization. She is the author of Beyond Appeasement: Interpreting Interwar Peace Movements in World Politics Cornell University Press (1999), and co-editor, with Michael Loriaux, of Law and Moral Action in World Politics University of Minnesota Press (2000). She is currently working on two books: one, co-authored with Audie Klotz, on constructivist methods, and the other, for which she was awarded an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, on religion in world politics.

Daniel Lynch is an Assistant Professor with the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. Lynch's most recent work focuses on the international origins of democratization. He is contrasting the experiences of Taiwan and Thailand with those of China and Burma. He is also researching Chinese concepts of comprehensive security and how they relate to identity formation. Publications include After the Propaganda State: Media, Politics, and 'Thought Work' in Reformed China Stanford University Press (1999).

Stephen Majeski is Chair and Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington and has research interests in international conflict and foreign policy making. He has published numerous articles concerning these areas in journals such as American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Studies Quarterly, and Conflict Management and Peace Science. He is currently finishing a project on how high level U.S. officials make policy with respect to Vietnam from 1961-65. He is also doing experimental work assessing how groups make choices in situations of conflict and cooperation and using evolutionary theory to simulate how agents interact in complex environments.

Nicholas Onuf is a Professor of International Relations at Florida International University, where he and Vendulka Kubalkova of the University of Miami organized the Miami International Relations Group focusing on constructivist scholarship. Dr. Onuf is widely credited for introducing the term 'constructivism' to the field in 1989 and he has a continuing interest in the many conceptual issues that this way of thinking has brought to the fore. In recent years he has also studied the conceptual underpinnings of modernity. While on Sabbatical at the Center for International Studies at USC (2001-02), is working on a book with his brother Peter Onuf, and another historian, linking the crisis of the U.S. federal union in the early 19th century to the rise of the liberal world. He also wants to assemble materials he has written in the last five years into a book on the conceptual foundations of constructivist social theory.

Wayne Sandholtz is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. His current research includes projects on the evolution of international norms, the comparative study of corruption, and the development of supranational governance in the European Union. His past work has focused on the politics of European integration, including work on integration theory, high-technology cooperation, telecommunications, and monetary union. He has had articles published in International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, and World Politics, and co-edited European Integration and Supranational Governance Oxford University Press (1998).

Colin Wight is Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He gained a first class honours degree from the University of Wales and completed his PhD on the "Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory" in 1998. Before going to Aberystwyth he worked as a journalist. Among Dr. Wight's research interests are International Relations theory, social theory, the philosophy of science and social science and political philosophy. His publications include Political Thought and German Reunification: The New German Ideology? Macmillan, (1999), a co-edited piece, "They Shoot Dead Horses Don't They? Locating Agency in the Agent-Structure Problematique" in the European Journal of International Relations, (1999) and 'Incommensurability and Cross Paradigm Communication in International Relations Theory: What's the Frequency Kenneth?' Millennium, Journal of International Studies (1996).

Workshop Moderators:

Robert English is an Assistant Professor with the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. Professor English's courses cover Russia, the former USSR, and Eastern Europe, with a focus that ranges from general issues of regional relations to specific questions of ethnicity, identity, and nationalism. He is presently working on a book-length study entitled Our Serbian Brethren: History, Myth, and the Politics of Russian National Identity.

Saori Katada is an Assistant Professor with the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. She teaches courses on Japanese foreign policy, international political economy, development and Pacific Rim issues. Publications include Banking on Stability: Japan and the Cross-Pacific Dynamics of the International Financial Crisis Management University of Michigan Press (2001).

J. Ann Tickner is a Professor with the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California, and the Director of the Center for International Studies. Professor Tickner's major current research interest is in feminist perspectives on international relations theory with a particular focus on ways of reconceptualizing security. Her latest book Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era was published by Columbia University Press (2001).

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