Prof Milja Kurki

BA (Hons) University of Hull; MscEcon University of Wales, Aberystwyth; PhD University of Wales, Aberystwyth; Bsc (Hons) Nat Sci Open University

• Monday 11.00-12.00

I am interested in how we come to understand the world in  such different ways and how we negotiate the differences in how we ‘read’ the world around us, in theory and in practice. I'm also interested in the limits of knowledge, in particular the challenges International Relations (IR) theories face today, as well as transdisciplinary exploration of how to think and act politically with planetary others, including more-than-human others.

My PhD research in early 2000s was focused on debates on the meaning of causality in IR scholarship, culminating in Causation in International Relations: Reclaiming Causal Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 2008). 

Between 2008 and 2012, I led a major European Research Council project on the conceptual foundations of democracy promotion practices, a project which led to the book Democratic Futures: Revisioning Democracy Promotion (Routledge, 2013) and which involved extensive policy engagement internationally. 

Since 2014 I've been exploring questions around how we might rethink the practice of politics in more expansive, relational, planetary and multispecies ways. My most recent book International Relations in a Relational Universe (Oxford University Press, 2020) argued for a relational cosmological orientation to study and practice of international politics. 

Currently I'm working on follow-up project on planetary multispecies politics. This involves not only transdisciplinary engagements across sciences, social sciences, humanities and arts but also thinking with non-human actors in different locations and spaces.