Highly respected Professor of International Politics Toni Erskine has joined The Australian National University (ANU) Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs as its new Director and hit the ground running.
The aspirations and approach of Bell School show a strong focus on research excellence, collegiality, award-winning teaching, and consistent policy impact and engagement in the Asia-Pacific.
Speaking at the Australian National University’s annual Australia 360 event last Tuesday, a panel of academics broke down Australia’s key regional relationships, starting in Southeast Asia.
The 2017 QS World University Rankings has seen Politics and International Studies at ANU move from 8th place in the world to 6th place. It is the third year in a row that ANU has been ranked among the top ten for these subjects.
In Man, the State, and War (1959), Kenneth Waltz identifies Spinoza as a “first-image theorist.” Alongside Augustine, Niebuhr, and Morgenthau, Spinoza holds the view, according to Waltz, that “political ills [are deducible] from human defects.” The description is disputable. And the inclusion of two contemporary thinkers alongside two classics cannot but provoke intellectual historians fearful of anachronism.
Post-World War II international relations can be sliced and diced over time in many ways, but the simplest might be to posit a Cold War period (1945 to 1987 or so) marked by limited great power cooperation, but considerable progress on other levels, not least in normative development; a post-Cold War Period of more significant international cooperation (1988-2016); and something so new we cannot yet name it, since 2017 but marked by the following characteristics:
In his most recent book, An Australian Band of Brothers, Dr Mark Johnston tells the story
of Don Company of the 2/43rd Australian Infantry Battalion – part of the 9th Division, which sustained more casualties and won more decorations than any other Australian division
in the Second World War. Like his previous works on Australians at war, the book is a ‘warts and all’ exploration of the life of front-line servicemen.
