We welcome Professor Helen M. Kinsella, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, to Queen’s University Belfast, to commence her tenure for the US Friends of Queen’s University Belfast Visiting Distinguished Scholar Professorship, awarded by the Fulbright Commission.

The Award covers a six-month appointment to conduct research and contribute to the academic life of the University.  Prof Kinsella is hosted by the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics (HAPP) and will be based at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. 

Helen will be working closely with Prof Debbie Lisle, Institute Fellow and Professor in the School of HAPP, and colleagues Dr Jamie Hagen and Dr Maria-Adriana Deiana, both Lecturers in the School of HAPP.  Their collaboration will focus on gender and armed violence and will contribute to the mission of both the Centre for the Study of Gender and Politics and of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at QUB.  Their research will include a qualitative study of tear gas to better grasp how harm, aid, and legacies of armed violence are gendered and the ways harm is experienced, aid is delivered, and violence is remembered. 

Professor Helen M. Kinsella will also contribute to the teaching program for undergraduate and graduate degree programs, as well as public engagement activity, sharing her knowledge and expertise with students, and with the wider networks and community of these research institutions.

Research interests

Prof Helen M. Kinsella has an outstanding track record and has received many awards, including the prestigious Sussex International Theory Prize. Helen has held Fellowships at the United States Counsel on Foreign Relations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the New York University School of Law.

Helen’s research interests include:

• International humanitarian law
• International norms and institutions
• International security
• Gender and armed conflict
• International relations theories
• Contemporary political thought
• Feminist theories

Publications

Professor Helen M. Kinsella is the author and editor of an extensive range of publications including books and articles and has published in the Review of International Studies, International Theory, Political Theory, Political Power and Social Theory, Feminist Review, among others.

Professor Helen M. Kinsella won the 2012 Sussex International Theory Prize (The Centre for Advanced International Theory) and received an Honorable Mention for the 2012 Joseph S. Lepgold Book Prize (Georgetown University) for her book The Image before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Combatant and Civilian (Cornell University Press, 2011; paperback 2015).

Recent articles include:

Settler Empire and the United States: Francis Lieber on the Laws of War

American Political Science Review

First View pp1-14

5 August 2022

Cambridge University Press

 

Contestation before Compliance: History, Politics and Power in International Humanitarian Law

International Studies Quarterly

Volume 64, Issue 3, pp 649–656

September 2020

Oxford University Press

 

Sleeping Soldiers: On Sleep and War

Security Dialogue

Volume 54, Issue 2-3

February 2020

 

Sex as the secret: counterinsurgency in Afghanistan

International Theory

Volume 11, Issue 1, pp26-47

March 2019

Cambridge University Press

 

Find out more about Prof Helen M. Kinsella here.