Video of my BISA Keynote on Seeing and Sensing World Politics

I recently had the pleasure and privilege of giving the keynote lecture at the 50th Anniversary conference of the British International Studies Association in Belfast on 19 June 2025.

I am more of a writer than a speaker, so doing this was rather challenging.  But I am grateful for the invitation and glad that I did it for - and with - Emma Hutchison.

When I received the kind invitation from BISA in October 2024, we knew that Emma would no longer be alive by the time the conference was to take place, in June 2025. We discussed this extensively and decided that I should nevertheless accept the invitation, travel to Belfast and present the lecture on behalf of both of us.

Here is the video.

The keynote lecture is based on an essay that Emma and I had been thinking about and researching for a decade.  We named it “Seeing and Sensing World Politics,” but kept the title under wraps for years because our our difficult time in hospitals over this period did not allow us to advance the project as fast as we had hoped.

The keynote, we figured, could be a way of reviving our project. Emma and I then worked together on this right until the end, spending much of our time in the palliative care ward discussing ideas and making plans.

I very much hope that the keynote does justice to Emma and that a proper written version of the essay will hopefully be completed by next year.

For now, thanks to Nick Caddick (BISA Program Chair), Juliet Dryen (BISA , Kyle Greyson, Juanita Elias for the generous invitation and to everyone who kindly attended and helped organise the event.

I am also grateful to BISA’s Emotions in International Studies Group, wich so kindly organised a panel in honour and memory of Emma. Thanks especially to the wonderful conveners and roundtable participants: Marcelle Trote Martins, Debbie Lisle, Pauline Zerla , Karin Fierke, , Chaeyoung Yong, Naomi Head, Anne-Marie Houde and Albert Cano.

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