Prof Milja Kurki

BA University of Hull; MscEcon University of Wales, Aberystwyth; PhD University of Wales, Aberystwyth

Prof Milja Kurki

EH Carr Chair

Department of International Politics

Contact Details

Profile

I'm interested in the differences in how we interpret what is going on around us and the implications for how we do politics in the context of many difficult planetary challenges. Since 2015 I've been working on a cross-disciplinary project on cosmological imagination in the study and practice of international relations and related questions around relationality and planetary, multispecies politics. 

I'm Co-director of the Planetary Challenges and Politics Centre at Aberystwyth University's Department of International Politics. 

Teaching

Module Coordinator
Lecturer
Coordinator
Tutor
Moderator

Research

My research is focused on theoretical and conceptual study of international politics but I'm is also interested in exploration of the policy implications of conceptual issues. My PhD was focused on the analysis of the meaning of causality in IR scholarship. I then led a European Research Council project on the conceptual foundations of democracy promotion practices between 2008 and 2012, a project which involved extensive policy engagement internationally. Since then I've been exploring questions of democracy and politics in a cosmological register, culminating in the 2020 book International Relations in a Relational Universe (Oxford University Press). 

Currently, I'm working on a research agenda on planetary and multispecies politics, a project with important implications for how we tackle climate change politics and also the challenges faced by democratic governance. 

Office Hours (Student Contact Times)

  • Monday 12.30-13.30
  • Tuesday 14.30-15.30

Publications

Kurki, M 2024, Cosmologies, sciences, planetary politics: reflections on ‘knowledge’ in new registers. in Handbook of knowledge and expertise in international politics. Oxford University Press.
Kurki, M 2024, The Limits of Pluralism: pluralism in pluriversal Anthropocene. in Methodological Pluralism in Political Science. Oxford University Press.
Cerkez, T, Finnis, J, Kurki, M, Miles, H & Thurgate, JJ 2023, Reflections on Imagination of Future and AI. in Handbook of knowledge and expertise in international politics. Oxford University Press.
Kurki, M 2022, 'Relational Revolution and Relationality in IR: New Conversations', Review of International Studies, vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 821-836. 10.1017/S0260210521000127
Kurki, M 2022, Relationality, Post-Newtonian International Relations, and Worldviews. in PJ Katzenstein (ed.), Uncertainty and Its Discontents: Worldviews in World Politics. Cambridge Studies in International Relations, Cambridge University Press, pp. 97-123.
More publications on the Research Portal