Jonathan Luke Austin

Last updated
Jonathan Luke Austin
Education IHEID
School International Relations, International Political Sociology, Pragmatist Sociology, Science and Technology Studies
Institutions University of Copenhagen
Notable ideas
Humanitarian design; post-critique; compositionism; material-aesthetics; international political design and ergonomics;

Jonathan Luke Austin is a sociologist and political scientist. Austin is currently a professor at the University of Copenhagen. He is also Director of the Centre for Advanced Security Theory at the same university. Previously he was Lead Researcher at the Geneva-based Violence Prevention (VIPRE) Initiative, hosted by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, [1] where he is also a Visiting Professor. Austin has previously been based at the University of Copenhagen, the University of Ottawa, and the Orient-Institut Beirut. [2]

Austin is widely known for his work in the fields of International Political Sociology (security studies), critical security studies, and International Relations.

Theoretically, Austin has played a central role in reconsidering the status of critique in International Relations, mainly through his engagements with pragmatist sociologies, science and technology studies, and postcritique. [3] [4] [5] He has also been a key advocate for extending the ‘materialism’ of the practice of International Relations, suggesting social scientific practice must move beyond its present preoccupation with epistemic modes of inquiry. [6] [7]

Empirically, much of Austin's work has revolved around exploring the ontologies of political violence. This includes a significant research programme studying the conditions of possibility underlying torture, conducted through both secondary sources and the interviewing of perpetrators. [8] [9]

Practically, Austin is known for applying ‘high’ social theory to concrete international problems. [1] This is currently occurring through the application of material-semiotic social theories to the challenge of violence prevention. [10] For this work, Austin was nominated among the ‘faces of peace’ in recognition of his Peacebuilding activities by the University of Geneva and Geneva Peacebuilding Platform. [11]

Currently, Austin leads the Future of Humanitarian Design research project, based on his previous work in violence prevention.

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peace and conflict studies</span> Field of study

Peace and conflict studies or conflict analysis and resolution is a social science field that identifies and analyzes violent and nonviolent behaviors as well as the structural mechanisms attending conflicts, with a view towards understanding those processes which lead to a more desirable human condition. A variation on this, peace studies (irenology), is an interdisciplinary effort aiming at the prevention, de-escalation, and solution of conflicts by peaceful means, thereby seeking "victory" for all parties involved in the conflict.

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In international relations (IR), constructivism is a social theory that asserts that significant aspects of international relations are shaped by ideational factors. The most important ideational factors are those that are collectively held; these collectively held beliefs construct the interests and identities of actors.

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Peacebuilding is an activity that aims to resolve injustice in nonviolent ways and to transform the cultural and structural conditions that generate deadly or destructive conflict. It revolves around developing constructive personal, group, and political relationships across ethnic, religious, class, national, and racial boundaries. The process includes violence prevention; conflict management, resolution, or transformation; and post-conflict reconciliation or trauma healing before, during, and after any given case of violence.

L. H. M. "Lily" Ling was a political theorist and scholar whose work focused around the theory of worldism within international relations. Much of her work draws from storytelling, the arts, and non-Western culture to present alternative versions of historical analysis of global affairs. She was Professor of International Affairs at The New School at the time of her death.

The Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) is a member-led network of civil society organisations (CSOs) active in the field of conflict prevention and peacebuilding across the world. The network is organised around 15 regional networks of local organisations, each region having its own priorities, character and agenda. Each region is represented in an International Steering Group, which determines joint global priorities and actions. GPPAC was initiated through extensive consultations in 2003-4, and officially launched as part of a global conference in 2005 at the UN headquarters in New York.

Critical security studies (CSS) is an academic discipline within security studies which draws on critical theory to revise and, at times, reject the narrow focus of mainstream approaches to security. Similarly to the case of critical international relations theory, critical security studies encompasses a wide range of theories including but not limited to: feminist, neo-Gramscian, Marxist, post-structuralist, postcolonial, and queer theory. Additionally, critical security studies, draws from a number of related disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and criminology to find alternative routes to approach questions of security.

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Feminist ethics is an approach to ethics that builds on the belief that traditionally ethical theorizing has undervalued and/or underappreciated women's moral experience, which is largely male-dominated, and it therefore chooses to reimagine ethics through a holistic feminist approach to transform it.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminist security studies</span>

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Cultural studies is a politically engaged postdisciplinary academic field that explores the dynamics of especially contemporary culture and its social and historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices relate to wider systems of power associated with, or operating through, social phenomena. These include ideology, class structures, national formations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and generation. Employing cultural analysis, cultural studies views cultures not as fixed, bounded, stable, and discrete entities, but rather as constantly interacting and changing sets of practices and processes. The field of cultural studies encompasses a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives and practices. Although distinct from the discipline of cultural anthropology and the interdisciplinary field of ethnic studies, cultural studies draws upon and has contributed to each of these fields.

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Anna Leander is a sociologist and political scientist. Leander is currently a professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She previously taught at the Copenhagen Business School and the Inst. de Relacoes Internacionais, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. Leander is well known for her work in critical security studies and international political sociology. Theoretically, Leander has played an important role in bringing the work of Pierre Bourdieu into conversation with the discipline of International Relations, as well as more recently working with materialist and pragmatist sociologies. Empirically, much of her work focuses on the contours of private military contractors, drones, and the politics of knowledge in a digital context. Leander has supported the development of International Political Sociology as an editor, through engagement with professional organizations and research evaluation as well as through her investment with education. Anna Leander was associate editor of International Political Sociology until 2017 and is currently associate editor of Security Dialogue and Contexto Internacional and co-editor of the Routledge Series in Private Security Studies. Leander has served on the Norwegian and Swedish Research Councils, numerous research evaluation boards as well as on the advisory boards of DIIS, the Danish Institute for International Studies and the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. She was a co-founder of the International Political Sociology section of the International Studies Association, she co-developed/co-directed the International Business and Politics Program of the Copenhagen Business School, and she has supported/supervised numerous doctoral projects. She is the founder of the University of Copenhagen's Centre for the Resolution of International Conflicts (CRIC).

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In literary criticism and cultural studies, postcritique is the attempt to find new forms of reading and interpretation that go beyond the methods of critique, critical theory, and ideological criticism. Such methods have been characterized as a "hermeneutics of suspicion" by Paul Ricœur and as a "paranoid" or suspicious style of reading by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Proponents of postcritique argue that the interpretive practices associated with these ways of reading are now unlikely to yield useful or even interesting results. As Rita Felski and Elizabeth S. Anker put it in the introduction to Critique and Postcritique, "the intellectual or political payoff of interrogating, demystifying, and defamiliarizing is no longer quite so self-evident." A postcritical reading of a literary text might instead emphasize emotion or affect, or describe various other phenomenological or aesthetic dimensions of the reader's experience. At other times, it might focus on issues of reception, explore philosophical insights gleaned via the process of reading, pose formalist questions of the text, or seek to resolve a "sense of confusion."

References

  1. 1 2 "VIPRE". VIPRE.
  2. "Jonathan AUSTIN | IHEID". graduateinstitute.ch.
  3. ”Doing and Mediating Critique: An Invitation to Practice Companionship“ Security Dialogue, 2019, 50 (1)
  4. “A Parasitic Critique for International Relations” International Political Sociology, 2019, 13 (2)
  5. “Critique and Post-Critique” Security Dialogue, 2019, 50 (4S)
  6. ”Towards an International Political Ergonomics” European Journal of International Relations, 2019, 25 (4)
  7. “Security Compositions” European Journal of International Security, 2019, 4 (3)
  8. ”Torture and the Material-Semiotic Networks of Violence Across Borders” International Political Sociology, 2016, 10 (1)
  9. “We have never been civilised: Torture and the Materiality of World Political Binaries” European Journal of International Relations, 2017, 23 (1).
  10. ”Becoming a Torturer: Towards a Global Ergonomics of Care” International Review of the Red Cross, 2017, 98 (903)
  11. "Faces of Peace". Geneva Peacebuilding Platform. December 11, 2017.