Andrew Linklater


Andrew Linklater FAcSS is an international relations academic, and is the current Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. In 2000, he was featured as one of the fifty thinkers in Martin Griffith's Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations.

Early life and education

Linklater holds a BPhil degree from the University of Oxford, a MA degree from the University of Aberdeen, and a PhD degree from the London School of Economics.

Teaching

His teaching career began at the University of Tasmania from 1976 to 1981, before moving to Monash University in 1982, where he taught for ten years. In 1993, he became Professor of International Relations at Keele University, and became Dean of Postgraduate Affairs in 1997 until he left Keele in 1999. In January 2000 he joined the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth, where he remains as the Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Politics today.

Perspectives on International Relations

Linklater can be characterized as a scholar of the critical theory paradigm within international relations. In his 1990 piece, Beyond Realism and Marxism, outlines the flaws in Realism International Relations theory, the English School theorizing, and Marxist International Relations theory. Linklater argues that International Relations theorizing take a more expansive approach to the relevant actors which includes forces that generate human norms and structure human relations between societies beyond the class framework of Marxism.

Research

Linklater has written and edited several books on International Relations, but one of his most important works is The Transformation of Political Community. Published in 1998, it was hailed by fellow academics Chris Brown and Steve Smith as "one of the most important books in international theory published in this decade". Linklater's research interests include the idea of harm in International Relations and critical theories of International Relations. In 2001 he became a member of the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, and in 2005 he also became a Fellow of the British Academy. He is also a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.

Publications