Dr Jaakko Heiskanen, PhD (Cambridge)

Profile

Jaakko Heiskanen joined the Department of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary in 2022. Previously he worked as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge, where he completed his PhD in 2020.

Teaching

• POL109 Global Histories
• POL251 International Relations Theory
• POL318 Dissertation in Politics / International Relations
• POLM102 Advanced Introduction to International Political Sociology
• POLM104 Nationalism and International Order

Research

Research Interests:

My research interests are located at the intersection of international relations theory, nationalism studies, and conceptual history. My first book Ethnos of the Earth: International Order and the Emergence of Ethnicity charts the global conceptual history of ethnicity. It shows how the invention and popularisation of ethnicity as a new concept for organising human diversity in the twentieth century helped to mask the enduring role of racial and civilisational hierarchies in international politics. I am currently working on a research project on the concept of the nomad.

Examples of research funding:

Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2020-2023)

Publications

2025 Ethnos of the Earth: International Order and the Emergence of Ethnicity (Cambridge University Press).

Journal Articles

2024 ‘Mind the Gap: The Nation Form and the Kohn Dichotomy’, Nations and Nationalism, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 1179-1195.

2024 ‘Reflex to Turn: The Rise of Turn-Talk in International Relations’, European Journal of International Relations, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 3-26, co-authored with Paul Beaumont.

2021 ‘In the Shadow of Genocide: Ethnocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and International Order’, Global Studies Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 4, ksab030.

2021 ‘Found in Translation: The Global Constitution of the Modern International Order’, International Theory, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 231-259.

2021 ‘The Nationalism-Populism Matrix’, Journal of Political Ideologies, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 335-355. 

2020 ‘Liminal Sovereignty Practices: Rethinking the Inside/Outside Dichotomy’, Cooperation and Conflict, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 284-304, co-authored with Dylan Loh.

2019 ‘Spectra of Sovereignty: Nationalism and International Relations’, International Political Sociology, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 315-332.

Collective Discussions

2025 ‘Nomads and International Relations: Post-Sedentarist Dialogues’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 190-224, co-authored with Joseph MacKay, Iver Neumann, Ingrid Eskild, Einar Wigen, Martin Hall, Alice Engelhard, Hannah Owens, Jamie Levin, and Franca Elena Kappes.

2024 ‘Nomads’ Land: Exploring the Social and Political Life of the Nomad Category’, International Political Sociology, vol. 18, no. 4, olae034, co-authored with Anthony Howarth, Sina Steglich, Nivi Manchanda, and Adib Bencherif.

Book Chapters

2021 ‘Nations and Nationalism in International Relations’, in The Routledge Handbook of Historical International Relations, edited by Julia Costa López, Halvard Leira, and Benjamin de Carvalho, Routledge, pp. 244-252.

Other Publications

2022 ‘Review: Nationalisms in International Politics’, E-International Relations, 23 October.

2021 ‘Nationalism and Populism: Political Ideologies or Ideologies of the Political?’, Ideology, Theory, Practice, 15 February.

Supervision

I welcome PhD proposals on topics relating to the history and future of world order(s), nationalism and the nation-state, modern international theory and international political thought, and/or any form of conceptual history.