THE OXFORD BERLIN LECTURE 2024

Patricia Owens will speak about her forthcoming book, Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men (Princeton, 2025). The academic field of international relations presents its own history as largely a project of elite white men. And yet women played a prominent role in the creation of this new cross-disciplinary field. Indeed, women were among the leading international thinkers of the era, shaping the development of the field as scholars, journalists and public intellectuals - and as heterosexual spouses and intimate same-sex partners.

Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, and weaving together personal, institutional, and intellectual narratives, Owens documents key moments and locations in the effort to forge international relations as a separate academic discipline in Britain. She argues that the creation of international relations was a highly gendered and racialised project that failed to understand plurality on a worldwide scale. Acknowledginig this intellectual failure, and recovering the history of women in the field, points to possible sources for its renewal.

Patricia Owens is Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Somerville College.