About International Relations as a Social Science (IRSS)
The IRSS group is an invitation to question the way we think and we do IR, be it from a theoretical, epistemological, ontological, methodological or practical perspective. This involves developing questions and areas often overlooked, marginalised or taken for granted in the discipline, as well as problematising IR research practices, professional identities and modes of relating.
We aim to create a space open to approaches from other disciplines and to question IR's scientific status, asking what it means to study international issues from a ‘social scientific’ perspective in the 21st century. From this perspective, we also aim to highlight IR’s epistemological assumptions and its social, economic or political underpinnings in order to foster conversations about the professional concerns IR scholars and students may face.
In addition to sponsoring panels at the BISA annual conference, the convenors actively welcome proposals for workshops or collaborations that further debates around these questions. To become a member of our working group, please visit the 'become a member' page for more information.
Past events hosted/sponsored by the working group include:
- Panel: ‘Assessing and Expanding IR cognitive frameworks: 100 years and beyond’, BISA annual conference, London, 2019.
- Workshop: ‘Performing Utopia: Discourses of Love, Compassion and More in International Relations’, Queen Mary University of London, May 2018.
- Panel: ‘Diversifying IR: Problems and Progress
within the Taught and Published Discipline’ BISA annual conference, Bath, 2018.
- Workshop ‘The World at the Door: When the Local and Everyday are International’, London School of Economics, November 2017.