Mervyn Frost and Ethics in International Politics

29 May 2024, 16.00-18.00

The Pyramid Room, King’s Building, Strand Campus, London

Please register here.

The event is a tribute to Professor Mervyn Frost and a celebration of his contributions to normative theory in International Relations. The panel of leading IR theorists will discuss Mervyn Frost’s work, using their insights to highlight its key themes, challenges, and points for critical discussion. True to Professor Frost’s characteristic conversational style, one that’s equally effective in the classroom and the conference hall, the session will include his responses and aim at a wider conversation with the audience. The aim is to honour Professor Frost and discuss key themes that resonate in our present context in global politics.

The event is chaired by Professor Vivienne Jabri (King’s College London).

Speakers:

Chris Brown is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at LSE having retired from a Professorship there in 2014; an LSE graduate, he spent 28 years in exile at the Universities of Kent and Southampton before returning to the School in 1999. He has published numerous books and articles on International Political Theory, many of which address the work of his friend and occasional colleague Mervyn Frost. Chris Brown’s main claim to fame is that his textbook Understanding International Relations is one of only two books on IR to have been translated into Euskara (the other is Thucydides The Peloponnesian War).

Kimberly Hutchings is Professor of Politics and International Relations at QMUL. Her publications include Kant, Critique and Politics (1996), International Political Theory (1998), Hegel and Feminist Philosophy (2003); Time and World Politics (2008); Global Ethics: An Introduction (2^nd edition, 2018); Violence and Political Theory (with Elizabeth Frazer) (2020); Women’s International Thought: towards a new canon (Co-Editor with Patricia Owens, Katharina Rietzler and Sarah Dunstan) (2022). She shares with Mervyn Frost a longstanding interest in Hegel’s thought and its implications for international ethics.

Cornelia Navari is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Economics and International Studies at the University of Buckingham. She is a ‘philosophically inclined historian and a historically inclined philosopher, for thirty years, to her benefit.’ Her research interest is the international society approach in International Studies, with multiple publications that include International Organization in the Anarchical Society (with Tony Brens Knudsen).

Mervyn Frost is Professor of International Relations in the Department of War Studies at King’s. His publications include Towards a Normative Theory of International Relations (Cambridge, 1986), Ethics in International Relations: A Constitutive Theory (Cambridge, 1996), Constituting Human Rights (Routledge, 2002), Global Ethics (Routledge 2009) and (with Silviya Lechner, the recent Practice Theory and International Relations (Cambridge, 2018).

Vivienne Jabri is Professor of International Politics in the Department of War Studies at King’s. She is Principal Investigator of the project, Mapping Injury, funded through the UKRI Frontier Research Grant, Horizon Europe Guarantee. She has four monographs, including War and the Transformation of Global Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, and 2^nd edition, 2010), and The Postcolonial Subject: Claiming Politics/Governing Others in Late Modernity (Routledge, 2013). She also works with the arts, co-curating two exhibitions, Traces of War (2016) and Conflict and Injury: The Score, You and I Both Know (2023).