As a transdisciplinary approach to the study of International Relations (IR),International Political Sociology (IPS) offers alternative lenses to understand global politics and transnational relations through a wide range of analytical perspectives and research strategies. By unsettling conventional IR categories such as the domestic/international divide, high/low politics, or rationalist/constructivist approaches, IPS foregrounds the power dynamics that shape entangled political spaces and their outcomes.
This workshop invites scholars, specifically those based in Belgium and the Netherlands, to rethink the international by exploring methodological and theoretical innovations that expand, challenge or reconfigure IPS. IPS has long drawn on insights from sociology, anthropology, geography, history and related disciplines, as well as on conceptual traditions including deconstruction, Foucauldian and Bourdieusian approaches, postcolonial and decolonial thought,queer and feminist theory, assemblage and materiality theory, Deleuzian perspectives and critical race theory.
Building on this diversity, we encourage contributions that critically interrogate IPS’ own assumptions and categories by bringing in alternative frameworks or boundary-pushing work in other disciplines. We particularly welcome papers that experiment with methods (ethnography, visual and digital methods, participatory approaches….) and that expand empirical horizons by engaging with unconventional sites, actors and practices of the international. The workshop seeks to create a space for researchers in this transdisciplinary field to explore new avenues for what IPS can study, how it can study it, and how the international itself may be rethought. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
· Migration, mobilities and borders
· Postcolonial and decolonial thought
· (In-)Security and surveillance practices
· Technologies of governance
· Science and Technology Studies, data practices
· Socio-legal, critical legal studies approaches
· Queer, trans, and feminist theory
· Politics of emotions
· Citizenship and sovereignty
· Social mobilizations
· Environmental challenges and planetary politics
· Expertise circulation and knowledge production
· Fieldwork methodologies
The workshop is supported by the Belgian and Dutch teams of the Doing IPS international hub.
