L.H.M. Ling Outstanding First Book Prize 2025 shortlist announced
We are delighted to announce the shortlist for the 2025 L.H.M. Ling Outstanding First Book Prize, celebrating innovative and boundary-pushing scholarship in International Studies.
This year’s shortlist reflects the intellectual diversity and critical engagement that defined the work of L.H.M. Ling, recognising books that challenge dominant paradigms, amplify marginalised perspectives, and reshape the discipline. Congratulations to all shortlisted authors!
The shortlisted books (listed in alphabetical order) are:
Heiskanen, Jaako (2024) Ethnos of the Earth: International Order and the Emergence of Ethnicity. Cambridge University Press.
Jaako Heiskanen’s Ethnos of the Earth is a pioneering global conceptual history of ethnicity, which challenges the naturalisation of ethnicity in IR by examining its historical emergence and the role it played in transforming global order from an imperial to a national framework. By unearthing how ethnicity reshaped the meanings of race and civilisation, Heiskanen demonstrates how this conceptual shift obscured global racial hierarchies while legitimising national governance structures. Overall, his innovative use of conceptual history and dialectical analysis offers a fresh perspective on the historical foundations of international order.
Hobbs, Jenn (2024) Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies, and International Politics: Feminist Technoscience, Biopolitics, and Security. Bristol University Press.
Jenn Hobbs offers a groundbreaking exploration of the intersections between health, security, and governance by placing bodily fluids at the centre of international politics. From plasma donations to biosecurity at airports, the book reveals how bodily substances are governed as sites of biopolitical control. Engaging feminist technoscience and Critical Race Theory, Hobbs’ work highlights the material consequences of security governance, shedding light on the racialised and gendered dimensions of health policies. This provocative rethinking of Security Studies expands the discipline’s horizons, urging scholars to consider the visceral and embodied dimensions of global politics.
Krystalli, Roxani (2024) Good Victims: The Political as a Feminist Question. Oxford University Press.
Based on over a decade of fieldwork in Colombia, Roxani Krystalli’s Good Victims challenges conventional understandings of victimhood, showing how it is not merely a passive status but a deeply political and contested identity. The book asks what kind of politics victimhood generates, offering a feminist analysis that extends beyond gender to rethink the state and its bureaucracies. With a rich methodological approach, Krystalli seamlessly integrates ethical reflections into her empirical research, making this an invaluable resource for scholars of political violence, research ethics, and feminist methodologies.
Rahman, Farhana Afrin (2024) After the Exodus: Gender and Belonging in Bangladesh’s Rohingya Refugee Camps. Cambridge University Press.
Farhana Afrin Rahman’s After the Exodus is an extraordinary feminist intervention into the study of forced migration, displacement, and humanitarianism. Drawing from the author’s ethnographic fieldwork, the book foregrounds the voices of Rohingya women, challenging dominant narratives that often render refugees passive subjects of international governance. By examining refugee camps as contested spaces of belonging, Rahman reveals the gendered politics of displacement and agency. Her meticulous empirical work, coupled with a commitment to feminist research methodologies, makes this book a vital contribution to the study of international migration, gender, and postcolonial theory.
The winner will be announced at our annual conference in Belfast, 17-20 June 2025. Register now.
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