Today’s guest post is by Dr. Susana de Sousa Ferreira, Lecturer in International Relations at Complutense University of Madrid and Academic Secretary of the Department of International Relations and Global History. Feel free to contact her at https://www.ucm.es/relhis/susana-ferreira
Teaching human rights and gender in International Relations can be an uphill battle. These topics are often treated as marginal to the discipline, and depending on the composition of your classroom, you may run into resistance from students who see gender as a “soft” or secondary issue compared to security or interstate politics. Last year, I decided to tackle this head-on in my optional course “International Human Rights and Gender Relations Regime” in the IR degree program at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, with the added twist that 70% of my 33 students were international Erasmus students from different cultural and geographic backgrounds.
Alongside the regular lecture syllabus, I built in a project-based learning (PBL) component that ran for the whole semester: lectures introduced the theoretical framework, and the project gave students a hands-on way to put that theory into practice. Each student group adopted one human rights article (equality, prohibition of slavery, prohibition of torture, freedom of expression, right to work, right to education) as their “beat” for the entire term. This let groups build depth instead of skimming through unrelated topics and gave them ownership over their material.
The project unfolded in three stages. First, groups mapped the global state of “their” right through a gender lens, using a SWOT framework to identify Strengths (progressive policies, advocacy networks), Weaknesses (implementation gaps, cultural resistance), Opportunities (new norms, international cooperation), and Threats (political backlash, armed conflict, economic crisis) — always asking how gender and other axes of vulnerability shape who actually gets to exercise that right. Second, groups moved to the UN system, selecting at least two real complaints filed with bodies like CEDAW or the Committee against Torture, and analyzing the context, the specific violation, the gender dimension, and the international response. Third, they repeated the exercise for a regional system (the Inter-American Court, the European Court of Human Rights) to compare how protection plays out across jurisdictions.
Today’s guest post is by Poppy Soilleux and Emily Gee of the University of Leeds!
Poppy Soilleux is an undergraduate student of International History and Politics. Her academic interests focus on international law, human rights law, and international relations, with a particular emphasis on accountability, global governance, and the protection of human rights. Alongside her legal interests, she has contributed to research on feminist mentorship and knowledge production in higher education. Poppy hopes to pursue a career in law, aiming to specialise in international human rights and public international law while continuing her interdisciplinary research.
Emily Gee is a final-year PhD student whose research focuses on gender, race, and security within the field of Politics and International Studies. Her doctoral research critically examines peacekeeper-perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse in peacekeeping operations, drawing on decolonial feminist theory to challenge gendered and raced harms present in the UN’s prevention of SEA strategy. Alongside her research, Emily has been a Seminar Leader at the University of Leeds since 2023, delivering modules in International Politics, Terrorism, Comparative Politics, Global Security Challenges, Power and Conflict, and a first-year skills-based module.
Higher education (HE) increasingly emphasises widening participation, student belonging, and inclusive teaching. Yet many students continue to encounter barriers that extend far beyond the classroom. First-generation students, working-class students, neurodivergent learners, carers, and those from underrepresented backgrounds often arrive at university without access to the networks, institutional knowledge, and social capital that HE frequently assumes. This project explores how feminist mentorship can function as an active, living pedagogical practice to help students navigate these barriers while transforming the educational experience for both students and educators.
Drawing on collaborative reflections between an undergraduate student and a seminar leader at the University of Leeds, the project examines mentorship not as a formal programme or professional development tool, but as a relational practice grounded in care, access, and acknowledgment. Inspired by feminist pedagogical traditions, particularly the work of bell hooks, we argue that mentorship offers a practical framework for creating more inclusive, empowering, and participatory learning environments.
Rather than positioning knowledge as something transmitted from expert to novice, feminist mentorship treats learning as a collaborative process. Students are recognised not simply as recipients of knowledge but as contributors to its production. This shift has important implications for active learning. When students feel that their experiences, perspectives, and questions are valued, they are more likely to participate, take intellectual risks, and develop confidence in their own analytical abilities.
The project identifies three principles that can be embedded into everyday teaching practice:
As we (or some of us, at least) move into a slower period of the academic year, I wanted to offer some reflections on this year’s events.
I must begin with a confession: for each of this year’s panels, I had a hidden agenda. I refer not to the printed running order (/script/emergency questions) that I kept handily out of view of my laptop camera when chairing. I mean to admit that the themes and participants for this year’s panels were selected with two goals in mind: first, the noble goal of discussing the latest ideas from some of the most influential and innovative researcher-practitioners in HE pedagogy; second, the – let’s say ‘prudent’ – goal of helping me advance my thinking on some embryonic SoTL research ideas.
With that in mind, my reflective posts (yes, that’s right – I just turned this into a series) will offer a summary of one of our panel events, followed by a brief account of how it has influenced a piece of SoTL research that I am in the process of developing. I would welcome feedback on either aspect.
Relational Pedagogies Inside and Outside the Classroom
Our first presenter at this event was Karen Gravett (Associate Professor and Associate Head (Research) at the Surrey Institute of Education, University of Surrey). Karen is among the leading researcher-practitioners of relational pedagogy in HE. She has written widely on relational pedagogies, including a recent monograph. Her presentation centred on the novel post-humanist strand of her conception of relational pedagogy and its potential benefits for addressing pressing questions around the role of digital tools in HE. In brief, she highlighted how much work on relational pedagogy is humanist in its focus and assumptions, e.g., focusing on staff-student relationships and student-student relationships. But a relational pedagogy can also be socio-material by taking into view our relations with environment and objects. This opens the way for a post-humanist strand of relational pedagogy that decentres the human subject and considers how we are constituted through our technologies and environments.
Karen highlighted two key benefits of her post-humanist conception of relational pedagogy. First, it can ground many familiar relational pedagogical practices, such as staff-student partnerships, co-creation, authentic assessments, and reflective writing. Second, it also provides us with theoretical tools to consider how to organize digital education to promote good pedagogical relations, rather than necessarily viewing the digital as a threat to the relational.
Next up were Kate Schick (Associate Professor of International Relations at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington) and Claire Timperley (Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington) co-presenting a selection of ideas from their recently published work on relational pedagogy.
To my mind, Kate and Claire are at the forefront of implementing innovative relational practices in PIR pedagogy. Their talk began with theory and moved on to practice, with each element corresponding to a recent, or upcoming, publication.
First, they explained their notion of ‘slow pedagogy’ understood as a relational form of subversive pedagogy. It is subversive in challenging the dominant ‘knowledge-transmission’ model of education, which emphasises efficiency and speed. It aims instead to create spaces for slowness, relationality, and care. This part of their talk built on their contribution to the 2024 Journal of International Political Theory special issue on ‘subversive pedagogies’ that they edited.
Next, they moved on to practical implications. First, they focused on classroom practices that invite students into slower spaces, offering three examples: micro-communities of learning, relational scaffolding for research projects, and creative writing. Here they drew on their 2025 article in Politics on ‘spacious learning’. As attentive ALPS readers will be aware, Kate and Claire previously published their own ALPS post on this work, so I will not do them the disservice of aiming to summarise it again here.
Finally, they focused on assessments, arguing that the goals of relational pedagogy are best served by a revised interpretation of ‘authentic assessment’ that reorients students to a different conception of learning through creative assessment practices. Here, they drew on ideas from their 2025 Teaching in Higher Education article on ‘assessment as pedagogy’.
UK-based readers will be pleased to hear that Kate and Claire are visiting in October with several events planned to discuss the conceptual foundations of their current book project. Keep an eye out for further details closer to the time.
The event then moved into the Q&A. Such was the richness of the discussion that I could not possibly aim to do it justice by way of providing a comprehensive summary. Also, it was a long time ago, and – cards on the table – I can’t read all of my notes. So, I shall instead highlight three questions that stuck in my mind as being especially incisive:
(1) Much research in this area is based on classroom experiences – can and should we aim to go beyond this to more general empirical research?
(2) Relational pedagogy can focus on micro-level practices, but do we also need greater attention to how universities can support these practices via macro-level systems?
(3) Many of the practical recommendations made by relational pedagogues are appealing, but do we need to sign up to the ‘theory’ to endorse them?
The pressures of academia can be intense. For graduate students, there are concerns about income, grades, and a ‘hidden curriculum’. For faculty, there are administrative pressures on narrow performance metrics, and an ever-shrinking pool of tenured positions. Despite these stressors, both students and teachers would do well to remember why we chose to engage in this profession. Most often, one’s interest stems from a joy for learning, the feeling of discovering something new, and the opportunity to share research with other like-minded individuals. In a world where pressures are intense, we must invest in ways to ensure academia remains an enjoyable pursuit. We should not lose our curiosity, nor our passion for discovering something new. One way to foster continued interest in the academic enterprise is through a loosely structured and flexible independent study, which we term a ‘trunk and branches’ approach.
In this blog series Drs. Michael Toomey, Andrew Judge, and Jenny Morrison (all University of Glasgow) explore how board games can be used as effective pedagogical tools to bring abstract concepts to life in the classroom. Each entry focuses on a specific game, outlining its mechanics, practical classroom applications, and any possible adaptions or limitations to its use within a standard seminar set up. In examining individual games, they aim to provide a support resource for educators seeking to experiment with games as part of their classroom activities, as well as engage critically with when and why we might use games within teaching. This month the series continues with Jenny Morrison’s review of Billionaires and Guillotines.
Consider submitting your proposal to present at Teaching Day at International Studies Association (ISA) 2027, which will be offered in both virtual and in-person formats this year (Tuesday, March 2, virtual, and Saturday, March 20th, for in-person in Atlanta). This third Teaching Day will be a great opportunity to share your teaching practice and exchange ideas with colleagues at all career stages on this fundamental part of our jobs. You can propose to lead a session on a core teaching and learning topic or skill (such as grading and giving feedback, course design, assignment design, active learning, or creating community and trust) or on the teaching innovation of your choice, as part of the Faculty Showcase. I encourage anyone who considers themselves to be a scholarly educator to submit–this is going to be a lower cost, add-on event to ISA that will provide a space for educators of all levels, regions, and perspectives to share ideas on teaching and learning, and fill in the gaps in training that many early career instructors experience. We hope to get a really varied set of presenters to ensure a wide range of perspectives are represented.
This book describes the pedagogical benefits of using games and simulations as an educational tool and provides step-by-step scaffolding for educators in political science seeking guidance for developing or adapting games to use in their classroom. The book will focus on every stage of the process, from preplanning (locating an existing game or making your own; aligning your game with course objectives) to implementation (playing the game in your classroom) to the postgame (conducting postmortems with students and assessing the game’s effectiveness). These techniques are illustrated in the book with examples of short and long games as well as testimonials from educators who use games in their classrooms.
The editorial team consists of Edmond Hally, Petra Hendrickson, Alex Smith, and ALPS’s Jen Ostojski and James “Pigeon” Fielder.
Plugging this proposed edited volume as a proud co-editor of Games without Frontiers and Beating the Clock, this volume will add to the discourse by addressing the “how” of classroom games: design, modification, iteration, logistics, facilitation, debriefing, and assessment, all rooted in sound pedagogy.
If you’re interested in contributing to this edited volume, contact the editors at thecaseforgames@zohomail.com. Our deadline for chapter proposals is 1 October 2026.
A year ago, at King’s College in London, the ASPIRE Network – a network for teaching-track academics working in Politics and International Relations – was launched. One of the pieces of work we wanted to do with ASPIRE was to recognise and amplify the often overlooked and under-appreciated work that teaching-track colleagues are doing in our field today. With that in mind, we decided to launch the ASPIRE Awards, which, we hope, recognise the breadth and depth of work that colleagues on Teaching & Scholarship contracts do.
Today, we are delighted to announce the winners of the inaugural ASPIRE awards, celebrating the outstanding contributions of colleagues across teaching, scholarship, leadership, and support within the teaching track community.
The quality of nominations was exceptionally high, and we would like to thank everyone who took the time to submit nominations and to recognise the work of colleagues across the discipline. We, the ASPIRE board, had a really challenging task to pick winners for these awards, and it was a really inspiring experience to see all the incredible work that ASPIRE members are doing.
