Department of International Relations Professorial Lecture Series
In the early 1980s, IR and development studies scholar Roy Preiswerk asked if we could study International Relations as if people mattered. Inspired by Preiswerk’s query, this reflective presentation gives some thought to what it means to study IPE as if people mattered. Or, to put it another way, how do we ensure that people do matter in both the study and practice of the international/global political economy. People are, of course, not absent from the broader IPE literature which includes attention to poverty, development, environmental concerns, transnational and global supply and care chains and the like. Through a preliminary (and brief) overview of some of that literature and an investigation of select contemporary concerns – garment supply chains, food systems, decarbonisation/low-carbon transitions – I dig a little deeper into what it means to make people matter – visible, counted, and un-hidden – in IPE.
About the speaker
Lorraine Elliott is Professor Emerita in the Department of International Relations, having previously held appointment as Professor of International Relations in the same Department. She is Lead Faculty with the Earth System Governance research network, and a former member of the ESG Scientific Steering Committee; an Associate Senior Fellow with RUSI in London; and a member of the advisory committee for the intergovernmental Platform on Disaster Displacement and the network of experts for the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (both of which are based in Geneva). She is also a former Chair of the Academic Council on the UN System. Prof Elliott's research ranges across critical human security, various aspects of global and regional (Southeast Asian) environmental politics and governance, and transnational environmental crime. She is an expert reviewer for UNEP's Global Environmental Outlook series and has fulfilled the same responsibilities for the IPCC assessments. Her latest (2024) publication on human security is '‘Unsettling human (insecurity): challenging neglect and making the unapparent appear’, in the journal Irish Studies in International Affairs.
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