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Department of Sociology, Politics and International Relations
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Dr Paul Kirby, BSc, LSE; MSc, SOAS; PhD, LSE.

Paul

Reader in International Politics, Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Fellow

Email: p.kirby@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: Arts One, 2.42

Profile

Paul is a Reader in International Politics and a Fellow of the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. He has ongoing research interests in gender governance, critical war studies, international theory and pop culture.  

The main focus of Paul’s work has been the politics of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, especially conflict-related sexual violence. With Laura Shepherd he is the author of Governing the Feminist Peace: The Vitality and Failure of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda (Columbia University Press 2024), which won the Carole Pateman Prize for best book on gender and politics of the last two years and honourable mention for the Yale Ferguson Award of the International Studies Association. Other publications on WPS include ‘The Strange Death of Feminist Internationalism’, ‘A Wake for Women, Peace and Security’, ‘Sexual Violence in the Border Zone', and New Directions in Women, Peace and Security (Bristol University Press, 2020, co-edited with Soumita Basu and Laura Shepherd). 

As well as WPS, Paul is currently working on three projects. A first excavates the intellectual and political history of ‘feminist realism’ as a fragmented project to reformulate statecraft and the national interest along gender egalitarian lines. A second maps the emerging and contested governance of masculinity in global politics, as in attempts to reform or abolish ‘problematic’, ‘toxic’ or ‘hyper-‘ masculinities. A third looks at left and liberal foreign policy critique, from campaigns for the democratic control of foreign policy to recent ideas like ‘progressive realism’. 

Paul arrived at Queen Mary in September 2022, having previously been an Associate Professorial Research Fellow at the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security and Senior Lecturer in the School of Global Studies at University of Sussex. From 2019 to 2024 he was Co-Director of the GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub: a multinational, interdisciplinary research consortium investigating the politics of gender justice and inclusive peace. He has provided evidence to Parliamentary committees on WPS and open access issues and written on these topics for ForeignPolicy, wonkHE, e-IR and the LSE Centre for WPS. He is also the author of the gender chapter in the Baylis, Smith and Owens textbook The Globalization of World Politics and has been a co-editor of the European Journal of International Relations, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, the LSE Women, Peace and Security Working Paper Series, and guest co-editor of the International Feminist Journal of Politics (2012), International Affairs (2016) and the Journal of Gender Studies (2026).  

Teaching

POL274 Gender and Feminisms in World Politics

Research

Research Interests:

Research Interests: 

Paul’s principle current research interests are (1) global gender governance, particularly the Women, Peace and Security agenda and humanitarian, development and security interventions targeting ‘masculinity’; and (2) the theory, critique and practice of statecraft, particularly feminist and leftwing critiques and reformulations in the twentieth century. 

Paul has previously worked on feminist theorising in International Relations, martial empiricism, and narrative IR. He expects to return to the theme of pop culture in the future. 

Examples of research funding: 

Paul’s grants include: 

  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Connection and Horizon Grants, Feminist Resilience Community of Practice and Network, 2025-2026 – Co-applicant and Collaborator  
  • UK Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund Gender, Justice and Security Hub, 2019-2024 – Co-Director, Management Team and project Co-Investigator 
  • Economic and Social Research Council Strategic Network on Gender Violence Across War and Peace, 2017-2018 – Lead proposal author and Co-Investigator 
  • International Studies Association Workshop on the Futures of Women, Peace and Security, 2017 – Co-convenor  
  • Sussex Development Fund fieldwork support, 2014 
  • British International Studies Association Workshop on Masculinity and Violence, 2011 – Co-convenor 
  • Michael Leifer Scholar, Department of International Relations, LSE, 2008-2011 – PhD bursary 

Publications

Books

(with Laura J. Shepherd) Governing the Feminist Peace: The Vitality and Failure of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda (Columbia University Press, 2024). 

  • Winner, Carole Pateman Award 2025 (Australian Political Studies Association); Honourable Mention, Yale Ferguson Award 2025 (International Studies Association); Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2024; International Affairs Book of the Month, Sept 2024. 

(edited with Soumita Basu and Laura J. Shepherd) New Directions in Women, Peace and Security (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2020). 

Journal Articles 

'Positive Masculinity Now: Towards a Study of Gender Transformed', Journal of Gender Studies, forthcoming 2026. 

‘The Strange Death of Feminist Internationalism’, Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy, 33(3-4), 2026: 64-75. (open access) 

(with Columba Achilleos-Sarll) ‘Unhappy Birthday! Women, Peace and Security at 25’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, December 2025 (forum co-editors and introduction) (open access) 

‘A Wake for Women, Peace and Security’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, December 2025 (open access) 

‘The Feminist Sovereign’ (forum on the Past, Present and Future(s) of Feminist Foreign Policy), International Studies Review, 25(1), 2023: 10-13. 

(with Laura J. Shepherd) ‘Women, Peace and Security: Mapping the (Re)Production of a Policy Ecosystem’, Journal of Global Security Studies, 6(3), 2021, ogaa045 (open access) 

‘Sexual Violence in the Border Zone: The European Union, the Women, Peace and Security Agenda and Carceral Humanitarianism in Libya’, International Affairs, 96(5), 2020: 1209-1226. (open access) 

‘The Body Weaponized: War, Sexual Violence and the Uncanny’, Security Dialogue, 51(2-3), 2020: 211-230. 

‘Political Speech in Fantastical Worlds’, International Studies Review, 19(4), 2017: 573-596. 

(with Jesse Crane-Seeber) ’The Feminist Manel: Notes Towards an Ambiguous Utopia’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 18(3), 2016: 485-488. 

(with Laura J. Shepherd) ‘The Futures Past of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda’, International Affairs, 92(2), 2016: 373-392. (open access) 

(with Laura J. Shepherd) ‘Reintroducing Women, Peace and Security’, International Affairs, 92(2), 2016: 249-254. (open access) 

‘Acting Time; Or, The Abolitionist and the Feminist’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 17(3), 2015: 508-513. 

‘Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict: The Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative and Its Critics’, International Affairs, 91(3), 2015: 457-472. 

‘The Unapologetic Schoolmaster’, Critical Studies on Security, 1(3), 2015: 349-351. 

‘How is Rape a Weapon of War? Feminist International Relations, Modes of Critical Explanation and the Study of Wartime Sexual Violence’, European Journal of International Relations, 19(4), 2013: 797-821. 

‘Refusing to Be a Man? Men's Responsibility for War Rape and the Agency/Structure Problem in Feminist and Gender Theory’, Men & Masculinities, 16(1), 2013: 93-114. 

(with Marsha Henry), ‘Rethinking Masculinity and Practices of Violence in Conflict Settings’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 14(4), 2012: 445-449. 

Policy Briefings 

‘WPS, Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and Defence’, Women Peace and Security Helpdesk, November 2022. 

(with Hannah Wright and Aisling Swaine) The Future of the UK’s Women, Peace and Security Policy, LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security and GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub Policy Brief, August 2022. 

‘Open Access in the Social Sciences’, SPARC Europe Briefing Paper, 2013. 

Book Chapters 

‘The Rise and Fall of Women, Peace and Security’, in Hillary Briffa and Joe Devanny (eds.) National Security Under Labour (London: Palgrave, 2026) (open access)  

‘Gender' in John Baylis, Steve Smith and Patricia Owens (eds.), The Globalisation of World Politics, 10th Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2026). Also in the 7th, 8th and 9th editions. 

(with Laura J. Shepherd) ‘Norm Trouble; Or, Backlash Against What?’, in Annika Björkdahl, Jenny Lorentzen and Inger Skjelsbæk (eds.) Backlash Against the Women, Peace and Security Agenda: Contesting Gender Norms (Berlin: Springer, 2026). (open access) 

(with Soumita Basu and Laura J. Shepherd) ‘Women, Peace and Security: A Critical Cartography’, in Soumita Basu, Paul Kirby and Laura J. Shepherd (eds.) New Directions in Women, Peace and Security (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2020). (open access) 

‘Wartime Sexual Violence’, in Caron E. Gentry, Laura J. Shepherd and Laura Sjoberg (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Gender and Security (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018). 

‘Homo Interruptus’, in Marysia Zalewski and Paula Drumond (eds.) Sexual Violence Against Men in Global Politics (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018). 

‘Masculinities’, in Jill Steans and Daniela Tepe-Belfrage (eds.) Handbook of Gender in International Relations (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2016). 

‘auto/bio/graph’, in Elizabeth Dauphinee and Naeem Inayatullah (eds.) Narrative Global Politics (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). 

Commentaries, Podcasts, Blogs 

Book Reviews 

‘Damage, Unincorporated: War Studies in the Shadow of the Information Bomb’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 5(3), 2011: 335-345. 

‘That Obscured Subject of Violence’ (with a response from Slavoj Žižek), Subjectivity: International Journal of Critical Psychology, 3(1), 2010: 117-121. 

Supervision

I welcome the opportunity to supervise doctoral students in the following areas: 

  • Gender politics, especially masculinities 
  • Global gender governance, especially the Women, Peace and Security agenda 
  • Feminist international political thought 
  • Statecraft and ‘progressive’ foreign policy 
  • IR theory and meta-theory 
  • Pop cultural politics 
  • Disciplinary history 

Past PhD students: 

  • Megan O’Mahony (LSE), ‘Representing and Remembering Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in the Second World War’ 
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