#BISA2025 War Studies Working Group keynote announced – Professor Michael Cox
We are excited to confirm that the War Studies Working Group keynote at #BISA2025 will be given by esteemed global scholar, Professor Michael Cox (LSE). The title of Professor Cox’s keynote will be ‘Belfast Days: Teaching War - Living Peace, 1972-1995’. The #BISA2025 conference celebrates the 50th anniversary of BISA and is expected to be our most exciting conference yet.
Before being appointed to a Chair in International Relations at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2002, Professor Cox taught for seven years at the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales Aberystwyth, and between 1972 and 1995 at The Queen’s University of Belfast. He later published widely on the ’Troubles’ including, ‘Bringing in the 'international': the IRA ceasefire and the end of the Cold War’, International Affairs (1997); ‘Northern Ireland: The War That Came in from the Cold’, Irish Studies in International Affairs (1998); and ‘The War That Came in from the Cold: Clinton and the Irish Question’, World Policy Journal (1999).
For several years Professor Cox was editor of Irish Studies in International Affairs while serving on the Standing Committee and Advisory Committee for International Affairs at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin, on whose International Advisory Board he still serves. With Fiona Stephen, who was Director of the Northern Ireland Council of Integrated Education (1989-1994) and his Queen’s colleague Adrian Guelke, he published a set of essays on the peace process in 2000 with Manchester University Press, entitled A Farewell to Arms?: From War to Peace in Northern Ireland which came out as a second edition in 2006. He is today an associate Fellow in the US and Americas Programme at Chatham House, London, a member of the Scholarly Advisory Board of the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History in New York, and a visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Milan.
The author, editor and co-editor of over 30 books, his most recent work includes a collection of his own essays, The Post-Cold War World (2018), a new centennial edition of J. M.Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace (2019), a new volume of E.H. Carr’s 1945 classic Nationalism and After (2021), Afghanistan: Long War: Forgotten Peace (2022), Agonies of Empire: American Power from Clinton to Biden (2023), and Ukraine: Russia’s War and the Future of Global Order (2023).
BISA Director/CEO Juliet Dryden said:
“The War Studies Working Group have secured excellent keynote speakers for the past few BISA annual conferences, and this year is no different. Professor Michael Cox’s publications and lived experience align extremely well with the 50th anniversary conference to be held in Belfast.”
At the BISA conference you can join a dynamic community of specialists from around the world to discuss, debate, and advance the field of international studies. Whether you're presenting your latest research, seeking insightful feedback, or simply looking to engage in thought-provoking discussions, our conference offers something for everyone. The draft programme will be released, and registration will open, towards the end of January 2025.
