Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?
I find that the most exciting research is happening in two areas. The first is in relational approaches to IR that expand how we conceptualize power politics, order, rules, norms (see this debate), identity, practices, and ideas, such as in culture and finance. There are many other contributions to mention and more are still to come from emerging scholars in this space that enriches IR as a whole.
The second area is how technology changes and is changed by global politics in recent work that theorizes the blurring of state and corporate power, conducts studies of platforms like Wikipedia or technologies like blockchain, and identifies new governance dilemmas. I also foresee debates about artificial intelligence, currently occurring more robustly in other fields, spilling over to IR in the coming years.
How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?
I was labeled a constructivist before I knew what it meant. At first, Alex Wendt became a guiding light for my thinking. If I had not encountered his work when I did, I would have left graduate school. As I progressed, Ian Hurd modelled how to read texts closely and find value succinctly. Other early inspirations are too many to list here, but I read broadly in the social sciences and humanities from anthropologists of the state to sociologists of law to classics in American political development and literary criticism.
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