The 14th AIPEN Workshop: Call for Papers

Wesley Widmaier is a Professor of International Relations at the Australian National University. His research addresses the interplay of wars, crises, and change – and the ways in which stability can cause instability, a concern that spans International Political Economy and International Security debates. His current research further addresses such dynamics by drawing insights from quantum theory, highlighting the ways in which understandings of uncertainty, superposition and entanglement have implications for instability, crisis and change. From the International Political Economy side, Widmaier’s work addresses the historical development of economic ideas, as the ‘lessons’ of past crises can be over-learned in ways that contribute to future crises. He has engaged these concerns across publications in leading journals spanning Review of International Political Economy, New Political Economy, International Studies Quarterly, Millennium, and Review of International Studies. He has published a book-length study concerning these issues, Economic Ideas in Political Time: The Rise and Fall of Economic Orders from the Progressive Era to the Global Financial Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2016). From the International Security side, Widmaier’s work similarly addresses the ways in which wars are constructed as having ‘lessons’ that acquire ‘lives of their own’ in ways that obscure sources of renewed instability and crisis. He has developed these insights across articles published in such leading outlets as the European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Quarterly, and International Relations – and in book-length form in Presidential Rhetoric from Wilson to Obama: Constructing Crises, Fast and Slow (Routledge, 2015). Widmaier is a past Section Chair of the International Political Economy section of the International Studies Association.