Seán Molloy
seanmolloyir.bsky.social
Seán Molloy
@seanmolloyir.bsky.social
Academic working on IR with occasional forays into other disciplines.
Reposted by Seán Molloy
🚨 Publication Alert 🚨

"Neoclassical Realist Theory of Populist Foreign Policy" just out with @risjnl.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1017/S026...

I explore how populism affects state behavior over time. This aims at further integrating populism scholarship into, and combining it with, IR theory.

1/9
Neoclassical realist theory of populist foreign policy | Review of International Studies | Cambridge Core
Neoclassical realist theory of populist foreign policy
www.cambridge.org
November 5, 2025 at 11:20 AM
#Ethics people - get your 250 abstracts to Natasha and/or I asap for our January #BISA Ethics and World Politics online event in “Teaching Ethics in Dark Times.”

Details below!
🌟 Ethics and World Politics BISA call for papers 🌟

"Teaching ethics in dark times" exploring innovative approaches to ethics education 🎉

Deadline to submit - 15 October ⏰
Workshop date: 14 January

Find out more here 👉 https://ow.ly/7LOv50X6UGE

Seán Molloy Natasha Saunders
Call for papers: Teaching ethics in dark times- Ethics and World Politics | BISA
- Ethics and World Politics Working Group
ow.ly
October 6, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Does anyone know of good recent pieces on Realist ethics in IR / IPT? Am giving a lecture on this in a few weeks and would be good to have a few up to date pieces.
September 19, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Pondering Rashomon to teach the benefits of the English School in IR.

Idea =

3 perspectives on international society > 1

B/c 3 allows discussion => more depth re Int Soc.

ES ≠ “answer” to Int Soc but more fruitful than any single theory.

But would students be too freaked out by Rashomon?
September 6, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Machiavelli is unexpectedly proving to be every bit as tricky as Hegel. I need to find people to write about who aren’t so goddamn tricky!
July 22, 2025 at 12:14 PM
EISA in Bologna is uncommonly stacked with interesting panels. The Working with the Negative and the Realist Thought, Theory, and Analysis sections look particularly good.

eisa-net.org/event/pec-20...
PEC 2025 | EISA
eisa-net.org
July 8, 2025 at 10:30 AM
Off to EWIS in Kraków to discuss Hegel and international law over the next couple of days.
July 1, 2025 at 9:41 AM
BISA gets off to a bizarre start with a weird, wheel bump the ground landing followed by an immediate take off again abd impromptu aerial tour of Belfast and environs. Landed the second time with no difficulty.

It’s going to be one of _those_ BISAs …
June 17, 2025 at 1:08 PM
Ultimately, portability will more than likely be granted because universities will want their new staff members’ outputs counted as part of their submission.
Wait, is this the REF saying there is no clear definition or records relating to academic staff who have been made redundant? That is… not the case.
I dunno, dude. If reality cannot be bent to your metric, maybe it's the metricisation that's wrong, not reality?
June 13, 2025 at 5:57 PM
This is how you do it, kids!
incredible Brian Wilson self-edit here:
June 11, 2025 at 7:19 PM
More excellent work from the powerhouse that is @felixroesch.bsky.social!
🚨 New paper with @thorstenwojczewski.bsky.social in @cambridgecria.bsky.social: In "Theorizing populism in international relations: a classical realist perspective", we explore the prospects of IR theories, focusing on classical #realism, for studying #populism.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
www.tandfonline.com
June 3, 2025 at 11:09 AM
Reposted by Seán Molloy
Are you short of a listen or interested in the links b/t IR theory & political ideology? @risjnl.bsky.social has just the thing for you - a new pod on our recent editor's selection, featuring our @sebkaempf.bsky.social interviewing (also our) Ben Martill:
www.buzzsprout.com/2395572/epis...
Editor's Selection: Theory/Ideology with Benjamin Martill - Review of International Studies – The podcast
Creating conversations across articles, identifying linkages, bringing together articles that speak to similar topics is the purpose of our editor's selections. In this episode, Dr Benjamin Martill, o...
www.buzzsprout.com
May 27, 2025 at 10:50 AM
I don’t find John McCormick’s attempts to revise the role of Agathocles in Machiavelli’s
writings convincing but I’m glad he is out there arguing against the grain.
May 13, 2025 at 8:21 AM
Reposted by Seán Molloy
US to declare immediate 10% tariff on imports from K2-18b

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Scientists find promising hints of life on distant planet K2-18b
Scientists find new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.
www.bbc.co.uk
April 17, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Have Trump et al said anything at all about international law? I don’t think they have; I get the impression that it’s not on their radar _at all_. Can anyone point me to any official statements regarding the USA and international law?
March 26, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Good to see the entry on Realism in the Elgar Encyclopedia of International Relations was in safe hands!
📣 Great to see Beate Jahn's and Sebastian Schindler's Elgar Encyclopedia of International Relations published with 179 (!) entries on all things #IR. 🚨 @elgarpublishing.bsky.social

Find my chapter on #realism here:

www.elgaronline.com/display/book...
March 24, 2025 at 10:54 AM
One person I must look into more one day is R.N. Berki. Every so often I come into contact with his essays and they’re always impressive.
March 19, 2025 at 11:03 AM
Just witnessed the perfect encapsulation of the Boomer spirit: a very tiny, elderly lady with two powerful dogs meets another tiny, elderly lady with a powerful dog. Between the two tiny, elderly ladies there was one leash and not a hope of controlling any of the three dogs.
March 5, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Does #Thucydides have lessons to teach _beyond_ the strong doing what they will and the weak suffering what they must? A brief thought piece by me in Logos Magazine on the relevance of Thucydides to contemporary events in international politics. 

logosjournal.com/between-the-...
Do the Strong Suffer When They Do What They Want? - Logos Journal
The early days of Donald Trump’s presidency have featured a series of clashes with allies and other states. The first real squall between Trump and an ally was the notably ‘fiery’ dialogue with the Da...
logosjournal.com
March 3, 2025 at 12:26 PM
My former PhD student, Carmen Chas’s forthcoming book. A groundbreaking study that combines International Law and Realist IR theory to excellent effect.
February 28, 2025 at 9:16 AM
Reposted by Seán Molloy
*sings in Blondie*

Saw Vesuvius
And it was a gas
Soon turned out
I had a brain of glass

www.thetimes.com/uk/science/a...
How eruption of Vesuvius turned man’s brain to glass
Ferociously hot ash cloud from the volcano that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD79 created a phenomenon not seen at any other archaeological site
www.thetimes.com
February 27, 2025 at 10:34 PM
I’m enjoying this book but can’t help feeling it’s a bit long at just short of 500 pages; that said, there’s a lot going on in Machiavelli )and the sources he draws upon) and it’s difficult to see what she could have left out.
February 19, 2025 at 1:31 PM
Reposted by Seán Molloy
'Towards a new IR' special section includes- Is international law a discipline OF crisis, or a discipline IN crisis? The discipline's divergent responses to Gaza suggest the latter. ⬇️ @ntinatzouvala.bsky.social #openaccess #AcademicPublishing #InternationalLaw
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
February 13, 2025 at 3:04 AM
Why do students think they don’t have to include page numbers in their citations anymore? How did they all decide en masse _not_ to include them? Phenomenon is particularly marked in the accursed in text citation formats.
February 4, 2025 at 11:28 AM
Don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved that Foucault didn’t choose this picture to introduce The Order of Things.
February 3, 2025 at 2:00 PM