Profile
Paul is a Reader in International Politics and a Fellow of the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary University of London. He has a particular interest in gender governance, statecraft, pop culture, critical war studies, and IR theory. He was until this year a Co-Director of the GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub, a multinational, interdisciplinary research consortium investigating the politics of gender justice and inclusive peace.
Paul is currently working on three overlapping projects: first, on the politics of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, especially as it is conceived and practiced by states in the global north; second, an intellectual and political history of feminist reformulations of foreign policy and statecraft; and third a mapping of the emerging governance of masculinity in global politics, as in attempts to reform or abolish ‘problematic’, ‘toxic’ or ‘hyper-‘ masculinities. He has also previously written on feminist IR theory, pop cultural politics and open access.
Recent publications include Governing the Feminist Peace: The Vitality and Failure of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda (Columbia University Press 2024, with Laura J. Shepherd); New Directions in Women, Peace and Security (Bristol University Press, 2020, co-edited with Soumita Basu and Laura Shepherd); ‘Sexual Violence in the Border Zone’; and a new analysis of eighteen years of the Women, Peace and Security ecosystem, again co-authored with Laura J. Shepherd.
Paul arrived at Queen Mary in September 2022, having previously been an Associate Professorial Research Fellow at the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security and Senior Lecturer in the School of Global Studies at University of Sussex. He has provided evidence to Parliamentary committees on WPS and open access issues and written on these topics for ForeignPolicy, wonkHE, e-IR and the LSE Centre for WPS. He is also the author of the gender chapter in the Baylis, Smith and Owens textbook The Globalization of World Politics and has been a co-editor of the European Journal of International Relations, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, the LSE Women, Peace and Security Working Paper Series, and guest co-editor of the International Feminist Journal of Politics (2012) and International Affairs (2016).
Research
Research Interests:
Paul’s current research interests are global gender governance (particularly the Women, Peace and Security agenda and humanitarian, development and security interventions targeting ‘masculinity’) and the theory and practice of statecraft (particularly feminist critiques and reformulations in the twentieth century).
Paul has previously worked on feminist theorising in International Relations, martial empiricism, and narrative IR. He expects to return to the theme of pop culture in the near future.
Examples of research funding:
Recent grants include:
- UK Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund Gender, Justice and Security Hub, 2019-2024: £17,500,000 – application co-author, Co-Director, Management Team and project Co-Investigator
- Economic and Social Research Council Strategic Network on Gender Violence Across War and Peace, 2017-2018: £143,000 – lead proposal author and Co-Investigator
- International Studies Association Workshop on the Futures of Women, Peace and Security, 2017: $10,000
- Sussex Development Fund fieldwork support, 2014: £4,000
- British International Studies Association Workshop on Masculinity and Violence, 2011: £2,000
- Michael Leifer Scholar, Department of International Relations, LSE, 2008-2011: PhD bursary
Publications
Books
(with Laura J. Shepherd) Governing the Feminist Peace: The Vitality and Failure of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda (Columbia University Press, 2024)
(edited with Soumita Basu and Laura J. Shepherd) New Directions in Women, Peace and Security (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2020).
Journal Articles
'Positive Masculinity Now: Towards a Study of Gender Transformed', Journal of Gender Studies, forthcoming 2025
(with Laura J. Shepherd) ‘Women, Peace and Security: Mapping the (Re)Production of a Policy Ecosystem’, Journal of Global Security Studies, 6(3), 2021, ogaa045 (open access)
‘Sexual Violence in the Border Zone: The European Union, the Women, Peace and Security Agenda and Carceral Humanitarianism in Libya’, International Affairs, 96(5), 2020: 1209-1226. (open access)
‘The Body Weaponized: War, Sexual Violence and the Uncanny’, Security Dialogue, 51(2-3), 2020: 211-230.
‘Political Speech in Fantastical Worlds’, International Studies Review, 19(4), 2017: 573-596.
(with Laura J. Shepherd) ‘The Futures Past of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda’, International Affairs, 92(2), 2016: 373-392. (open access)
‘Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict: The Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative and Its Critics’, International Affairs, 91(3), 2015: 457-472.
‘How is Rape a Weapon of War? Feminist International Relations, Modes of Critical Explanation and the Study of Wartime Sexual Violence’, European Journal of International Relations, 19(4), 2013: 797-821.
‘Refusing to Be a Man? Men's Responsibility for War Rape and the Agency/Structure Problem in Feminist and Gender Theory’, Men & Masculinities, 16(1), 2013: 93-114.
Policy Briefings
‘WPS, Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and Defence’, Women Peace and Security Helpdesk, November 2022.
(with Hannah Wright and Aisling Swaine) The Future of the UK’s Women, Peace and Security Policy, LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security and GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub Policy Brief, August 2022.
‘Open Access in the Social Sciences’, SPARC Europe Briefing Paper, 2013.
Public Engagement
Podcast, Feminifesto, October 2024
(with Hannah Wright and Aisling Swaine) ‘Doing Women, Peace and Security Better: Opportunities for the Next UK National Action Plan’, LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security Blog, 17 August 2022.
(with Toni Haastrup) ‘It Takes More Than a Diverse Cabinet to Advance a Feminist Foreign Policy’, ForeignPolicy.com, 20 January 2021.
(with Soumita Basu and Laura J. Shepherd) ‘Power and Danger in the Third Decade of Women, Peace and Security’, LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security Forum, 23 October 2020.
‘The Climate for Women in IR and Politics’, The Disorder of Things, 6 March 2017.
(with Laura J. Shepherd) ‘The New Politics of Women, Peace and Security’, LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security Blog, 2 December 2016.
‘When White Men Rule the World’, Oxford University Press Blog, 17 November 2016.
‘Stern’s new REF will create a more open research culture’, wonkHE, 1 August 2016.
‘The Security Fetish’, International Studies Quarterly Blog, 11 July 2016.
‘Women, Peace and Security’, podcast for Chatham House, 11 March 2016.
‘Open International Relations: The Digital Commons and the Future of IR’, e-IR, 10 November 2015.
(with Kathleen Kuehnast) ‘What Do We Really Know About Sexual Violence?’, Foreign Policy.com, 10 December 2014.
‘Acting Time; Or, Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict’, ETH Zurich International Relations and Security Network Blog, 4 July 2014.
(with the Missing Peace Network), ‘An Open Letter to UK Foreign Secretary William Hague and UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie’, Huffington Post, 17 June 2014.
(with Meera Sabaratnam) ‘Why Metrics Cannot Measure Research Quality: A Response to the HEFCE Consultation’, The Disorder of Things, 16 June 2014.
‘On Rejecting Journals’, LSE Impact of Social Sciences, 14 August 2013.
(with Meera Sabaratnam) ‘Getting Somewhere: HEFCE Proposals on Open Access for a Post-2014 Research Excellence Framework’, LSE Impact of Social Sciences, 1 August 2013.
(with Meera Sabaratnam) ‘Open Access: HEFCE, REF2020 and the Threat to Academic Freedom’, The Disorder of Things, 4 December 2012.
Forum Contributions
‘The Feminist Sovereign’ (forum on the Past, Present and Future(s) of Feminist Foreign Policy), International Studies Review, 25(1), 2023: 10-13.
(with Jesse Crane-Seeber) ’The Feminist Manel: Notes Towards an Ambiguous Utopia’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 18(3), 2016: 485-488.
(with Laura J. Shepherd) ‘Reintroducing Women, Peace and Security’, International Affairs, 92(2), 2016: 249-254. (open access)
‘Acting Time; Or, The Abolitionist and the Feminist’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 17(3), 2015: 508-513.
‘The Unapologetic Schoolmaster’, Critical Studies on Security, 1(3), 2015: 349-351.
(with Marsha Henry), ‘Rethinking Masculinity and Practices of Violence in Conflict Settings’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 14(4), 2012: 445-449.
‘Damage, Unincorporated: War Studies in the Shadow of the Information Bomb’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 5(3), 2011: 335-345.
‘That Obscured Subject of Violence’ (with a response from Slavoj Žižek), Subjectivity: International Journal of Critical Psychology, 3(1), 2010: 117-121.
Chapters in Edited Collections
‘Norm Trouble’, in Annika Björkdahl, Jenny Lorentzen and Inger Skjelsbæk (eds.) Backlash: The Women, Peace and Security Agenda Under Pressure (Berlin: Springer, 2025)
'Gender' in John Baylis, Steve Smith and Patricia Owens (eds.), The Globalisation of World Politics, 10th Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025). Also in the 7th, 8th and 9th editions.
(with Soumita Basu and Laura J. Shepherd) ‘Women, Peace and Security: A Critical Cartography’, in Soumita Basu, Paul Kirby and Laura J. Shepherd (eds.) New Directions in Women, Peace and Security (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2020). (open access)
‘Wartime Sexual Violence’, in Caron E. Gentry, Laura J. Shepherd and Laura Sjoberg (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Gender and Security (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018).
‘Homo Interruptus’, in Marysia Zalewski and Paula Drumond (eds.) Sexual Violence Against Men in Global Politics (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018).
‘Masculinities’, in Jill Steans and Daniela Tepe-Belfrage (eds.) Handbook of Gender in International Relations (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2016).
‘auto/bio/graph’, in Elizabeth Dauphinee and Naeem Inayatullah (eds.) Narrative Global Politics (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).
