Writing Critically About War: Joint Book and Series Launch

This half-day book launch brings together leading authors writing critically and from an interdisciplinary vantage point about war. The three books covered appear in the series PRISMS: The Humanities and War, published by MIT Press and include War and Aesthetics, co-edited by Anders Engberg-Pedersen, The World According to Military Targeting, by Erik Reichborn-Kjenerud, and World in Conflict: War and the Limits of Politics, authored by Vivienne Jabri.

• is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Southern Denmark, Chair of Humanities at the Danish Institute for Advanced Studies, and Director of the Nordic Humanities Center. He is the author of Empire of Chance: The Napoleonic Wars and the Disorder of Things and Martial Aesthetics: How War Became an Art Form. He serves editor of the book series Prisms: Humanities and War at MIT Press.
• is Professor of International Politics in the Department of War Studies at King's. She is Principal Investigator on the five-year ERC advanced project, Mapping Injury, funded as a UKRI Frontier Research Grant (Horizon Europe Guarantee). Her research interests centre on war and the political, international political theory, aesthetic thought, the postcolonial international, and critical approaches to global justice. She is author of five books, the most recent of which is Worlds in Conflict: War and the Limits of Politics (MIT Press, 2025). Further details about her current research project can be accessed here.
• is Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). His interdisciplinary research interest lies at the intersection of war and political violence, history of science and technology, and critical theory.

• is Professor of International Politics in the Department of War Studies and Principal Investigator of the Consolidator Grant SECURITY FLOWS (‘Enacting border security in the digital age: Political worlds of data forms, flows and frictions’), funded by the European Research Council (2019-2024). Her research has developed a critical political analysis of security practices.
  As more and more problems and people become constituted as objects and subjects of security, her research has inquired into the effects this has for political subjectivity and democracy. Her current research focuses on how digital technologies reconfigure security and surveillance practices, and how algorithms and machine learning recast relations between security, democracy and critique.
  
  Claudia received the 2023 Distinguished Scholar Award by the International Political Sociology Section of the International Studies Association. Her latest book, (with Tobias Blanke) won the 2023 Best Book Award by the Science, Technology and Arts in International Relations (STAIR) section of the International Studies Association.
  
  
• received his doctorate from the University of Stockholm in 1993. His fields of interest include international relations and the history of international thought. Jens Bartelson has published extensively on core concepts in international thought and their history. He is the author of Becoming International (Cambridge University Press, 2023), War in International Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Visions of World Community (Cambridge University Press, 2009), The Critique of the State (Cambridge University Press, 2001), A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge University Press, 1995), as well as of numerous articles in leading journals across the human, legal, and social sciences.
  
  
• is Professor of Visual Culture, with a focus on the Middle East and Global South (Birmingham City University). Developing national and international partnerships with artists and cultural organisations, Downey's interdisciplinary research contributes to and supports a critical understanding of postcolonial art practices, Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital methodologies in the arts, and Post-Disciplinary research methods.
  
  Anthony’s broader research and teaching focus on how visual strategies explore the technologies of colonialism and the role of AI in neocolonialism; predictive technologies in warfare and conflict; the role of AI in projecting realities; and the impact of Generative AI(GenAI) on creative practices. He recently co-edited a special issue of Digital War (2024) on The Airspace Tribunal: towards a new human right to live without physical or psychological threat from above. Anthony is currently co-editing the first Special Journal Collection on AI and Memory for Memory, Mind & Media (Cambridge University Press, 2025).
  
  
• PhD, Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, and Professorial Affiliate of the School of Global Studies Gothenburg University. She has seven single-authored books, three collections of edited works, and one five volume work showcasing key works in Feminist IR. She also has an extensive archive of journal articles on feminist IR; critical development studies; critical IR theory; Zimbabwean politics; art, museums and international relations; and critical war studies.
  
  Christine's latest research is on the politics of memorialising international war and peace and features in Curating and Re-Curating the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2019) and “Making Memorials to the Future,” in Global Studies Quarterly (2023). She has held the Swedish Research Council’s Kerstin Hesselgren Professorship, was awarded an honorary doctorate in social science from Lund University (Sweden), and named one of Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations, (Griffiths, Roach, Solomon, eds. Routledge, 2009). She is currently co-editor with Harriet Gray (York, UK) of the new Routledge book series Experiencing War.

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