Professor Jason Ralph

Professor in International Relations

Photo of Professor Jason Ralph

I currently hold a British Academy Fellowship and I am a Deputy Director on the Building Sustainable Societies research project within the Leeds Social Science Institute.

I am interested in international law, international society, American foreign policy, human rights and the war on terror. I recently completed an ESRC funded project into the state of exceptionalist thinking in America’s war on terror and I currently hold a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship to examine British Centre-Left Foreign Policies after Iraq.

I joined the University of Leeds in 1998, having graduated with a Ph.D. in War Studies from King's College London and having taught for a year at Exeter University. I hold Bsc and Msc degrees from the University of Aberystwyth and have been a Visiting Researcher at the University of Queensland.

Research Interests

My research is located with the "English School" approach to International Relations (IR), which is interested in the question of whether 'society' (e.g. international and world society) can exist beyond the state. It focuses on how the institutions of international society (e.g. international law, war, balance of power), as identified by Hedley Bull in his 1977 classic The Anarchical Society are being changed by the process of globalisation.

My contribution to this area is a set of three research projects called ‘The American Exception’. These examine how the United States and its liberal allies have reacted to a growing cosmopolitan consciousness across world society.

The first project (2002-2007) examined US opposition to the International Criminal Court; the second (2007-2011) was part funded by the Economic and Social Research Council examines US policy in four areas where it either violated or challenged international law: the targeting, detention, prosecution and interrogation of terrorist suspects; the third project (2011-2012) is currently funded by a British Academy mid-career fellowship is called ‘International law, the American exception and British centre-left foreign policies after Iraq’.

You can follow my research projects on my blog The American Exception.

Teaching

I teach modules called 'International Politics', 'US Foreign Policy' and 'International Law and Ethics in the War on Terror'. I have just completed a pedagogic research project with Dr Simon Lightfoot, and Dr Naomi Head on the use of podcasting in these modules. See forthcoming article in European Political Science.

PhD Supervision

I am able to supervise in the following areas.

International Relations, in particular those informed by English School approaches.
US foreign policy, in particular the war on terror.
The Politics of International Law, in particular, the use of force in international humanitarian law and the International Criminal Court.

Key Publications

Books

Ralph, J.G. (2007) Defending the Society of States: Why America Opposes the International Criminal Court and Its Vision of World Society. Oxford University Press.

Ralph, J.G. (2001) Beyond the Security Dilemma: Ending America's Cold War. Ashgate.

Chapters in Books

Ralph, J. G. (2009) "To usher in a new paradigm? President Bush's foreign policy legacy", in Jon Herbert and Andy Wroe Assessing the George W. Bush Presidency: A Tale of Two Terms, Edinburgh University Press.

Ralph, J.G. (2008) "Republic, Empire or Good International Citizen? International Law and American Identity", in Ken Christie (ed.) US National Identity in the 21st Century, Routledge.

Journals

Ralph, J.G. (2009) "The Laws of War and the State of the American Exception", Review of International Studies forthcoming.

Ralph, J. (2009) "Which Cosmopolitanism? Whose Empire? Or why the Schmittian charge of 'Liberal Imperialism' is only half right", Global Society forthcoming.

Ralph, J.G. (2006) "America's War on Terrorism. Making Sense of the "Troubling Confusion", The International Journal of Human Rights, 10(2), pp.234-256.

Ralph, J.G. (2005) "International society, the International Criminal Court and American foreign policy", Review of International Studies, 31(1), pp.27-44.