The Oxford Handbook of Emotions in International Relations

Over the past two decades, the study of emotions has emerged as a transformative frontier within International Relations (IR). The Oxford Handbook of Emotions in International Relations aims to capture and contextualize these developments, highlighting how the analysis of emotions has allowed for deeper understandings of international and global politics. The handbook provides a systematic overview, mapping an inherently multi-disciplinary field. Contributions to the volume reveal that emotions are implicated in a variety of processes and practices in IR-including diplomacy, security and conflict, global governance and law, and transnational politics.
The chapters trace the evolution of emotion in IR from “first wave” research on emotions as irrational impulses disrupting decision-making at moments of crisis to “second wave” contributions seeking to investigate the manifold roles emotions play in shaping state behavior and global interactions in practice. The handbook showcases recent scholarship on the influence of emotions across many areas, including human rights and humanitarianism, peace negotiations, transitional justice, climate change, financial crises, political protest, populist movements, and immigration. Through these investigations, the volume offers innovative insights and opens up new questions for the field. Rather than merely asserting that emotions matter, the handbook demonstrates how an analytical focus on emotions can challenge assumptions about rationality and reveal deeper complexities in world politics.

Author Biography

Simon Koschut is Professor of International Security at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany. His research interests are international relations, in particular regional security governance, norms and emotions in world politics. Previously, he was a DFG Heisenberg fellow and visiting professor at Freie Universität Berlin, Fritz Thyssen Fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and Fulbright Scholar at San Francisco State University. He is currently leading a research project on “Affective Contestation” that looks at how emotions underpin transnational protest against EU migration policies.

Andrew Ross is Research Professor in the International Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University. He has research interests relating to populism, participatory media, emotion, and authority in world politics. In addition to the book Mixed Emotions: Beyond Fear and Hatred in International Conflict, his work theorizing the role of emotions in IR has been

published in Millennium, International Theory, the European Journal of International Relations, International Organization, and Political Psychology.