LISD Non-Resident Fellow James Gow Published New Book, "Impact in International Affairs: The Quest for World-Leading Research"

Oct. 31, 2020

James Gow, Non-Resident Fellow at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination and Professor of International Peace and Security at King’s College London, UK, and Henry Redwood, Lecturer in International Relations at King’s College London, UK, have published a new book titled, "Impact in International Affairs: The Quest for World-Leading Research." The book is published with Routledge.

Book Description

The book examines how and to what extent academic research in politics and international studies has had 'impact' — in doing so, it also considers what might characterize ‘world-leading’ research impact. The volume addresses the concept of ‘impact’ and offers a typology of the term — instrumental, conceptual, capacity building and procedural. The authors examine 111 impact case studies in the UK Research Excellence Framework (2014) that were classified as having achieved the highest level of evaluation, and they identify eight characteristics that mark ‘world-leading’ impact. The book concludes that process, public, and media engagement are previously underestimated aspects of impact in official approaches. It further demonstrates that achieving the top levels of impact in international relations is possible, but that factors, such as the nature of the subject, the approach of researchers and mean-spiritedness in the peer review process inhibited this.

ISBN 9780367902032

Published August 13, 2020 by Routledge

About the Authors

James Gow is Professor of International Peace and Security and Co-Director of the War Crimes Research Group at King’s College London. He is a non-resident scholar with the Liechtenstein Institute, Princeton University and previously lectured in European Studies at the University of Hatfield. From 2013-16, Gow held a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. He has served as an expert adviser and an expert witness for the Office of the Prosecutor at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (1994-8), where he was the first ever witness at an international criminal tribunal. He has also served as an Expert Adviser to UK Secretaries of State for Defense. Gow has held visiting positions at the University of Sheffield, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, Columbia University, and Princeton University. His numerous publications include War and War Crimes, Prosecuting War Crimes: Lessons and Legacies of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Security, Democracy and War Crimes (as co-author), all in 2013, and War, Image and Legitimacy (2007), The Serbian Project and Its Adversaries: a Strategy of War Crimes (2003) and Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War (1997).

Henry Redwood is ESRC post-doctoral researcher in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, where he also completed his ESRC-funded PhD in December 2017, under the supervision of Dr. Rachel Kerr and Professor James Gow. Henry has recently worked as a research associate on the AHRC funded project, ‘Art & Reconciliation: Conflict, Culture and Community’, which explores alternative approaches, and forgotten instances of, reconciliation in the aftermath of violence, focused on the Western Balkans. Henry’s research draws on critical IR, law and aesthetic theory, alongside sustained fieldwork, to explore the politics of knowledge production after conflict, with a particular focus on post-conflict archives and artistic interventions. His research focuses on these themes within the context Rwanda, and the Western Balkans. Henry holds a BA and MA in History from the University of Bristol.