2023 Prize in International Relations

Winner: Sean Richmond, Carleton

Unbound in War? International Law in Canada and Britain’s Participation in the Korean War and Afghanistan Conflict

Excerpt from jury report: Unbound War is a fascinating, nuanced examination of the ways IL influences states’ behaviour in war. Rigorously grounding his claims in extensive archival research and an impressive array of interviews with top policymakers, Richmond offers a compelling comparison of Canada and the UK. His hypotheses and conclusions effectively challenge IR realist and rationalist expectations as well as international legal scholarship, finding that the laws of war have shaped and constrained Canadian and British conduct in the conflicts in Korea and Afghanistan despite policymakers’ seeming inability or reluctance to always see the laws of war as a binding set of rules.

Winner: Katharina M. Millar, LSE

Support the Troops: Military Obligation, Gender, and the Making of Political Community

Excerpt from jury report: Written in an accessible and compelling way, the volume is a great example of feminist curiosity in IR at its best. Amply documented, the book offers a thorough empirical analysis of the gender politics of the “support the troops” discourse in the Unites States and the UK. It unveils how framing violence in terms of internal solidarity (support the troops) becomes central in liberal democracies, and how it makes opposition to war difficult to frame and sustain. Through its theorization of the gendered liberal military contract, the book offers a significant and rigorous theoretical contribution in understanding changes in civil-military relations.