SPAIS Lunchtime Talks are a chance to hear SPAIS lecturers and researchers offer their take on some of the big issues of the day. Talks will draw on their research and expertise, inviting us to think critically about events and ideas shaping popular discourse on politics and international relations today. Talks will last approximately 25 minutes, followed by a Q&A session. 

This talk is based on Prof. Carver and Dr. Lyddon’s forthcoming book Masculinity, Gender and International Relations, to be published in 2022 by Bristol University Press. It will address the ways that sex, gender and sexuality define what world politics is about, not just what does or doesn’t count as an ‘issue’ within it. To do that, Laura and Terrell confront the imbrication of militarism with masculinity at both the empirical and symbolic levels. Their focus is not on what militarism and masculinity ‘are’, but rather on what they do - and this allows them to develop a close engagement with the secretive and securitised spaces of the global arms trade.