My research at the intersection of international security and global governance focuses on security regionalism, multilateral diplomacy, and the role of meaning-making practices in world politics. As an IR scholar and a Southeast Asianist, through my developing research programme on multilateralism in the Asia-Pacific, I strive to produce original findings that derive from in-depth study of this region and local practitioners, but that can inform broader debates in the discipline as well as our understanding of more traditional (Western-centric) objects of study. I have published in English and French in International Studies Quarterly, International Affairs, European Journal of International Relations, Global Studies Quarterly, International Studies Perspectives, PS: Political Science & Politics, The Pacific Review, L'Espace politique, and Monde Chinois, among others. I am also the author of Enacting the Security Community: ASEAN's Never-Ending Story (Stanford University Press, 2022). I am currently working on three distinct but related major projects on 1. practices of multilateral diplomacy in Southeast Asia, 2. The regionalization of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, and 3. competing narratives about the rules-based international order in the 21st century.

Mes recherches situées à l'intersection de la sécurité internationale et de la gouvernance globale portent sur le régionalisme sécuritaire, la diplomatie multilatérale et le rôle du discours dans la construction sociale de la politique mondiale. Mes travaux ont été publiés en anglais et en français dans International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, International Affairs, Global Studies Quarterly, International Studies Perspectives, The Pacific Review, Pacific Affairs, L'Espace politique, and Monde Chinois, entre autres. Je suis également l'autrice d'Enacting the Security Community: ASEAN's Never-Ending Story (Stanford University Press, 2022). Je travaille actuellement à la réalisation de trois principaux projets de recherche sur 1. les pratiques diplomatiques en Asie Sud-Est, 2. la régionalisation de l'agenda Femmes, Paix et Sécurité et 3. Les récits sur la refonte de l'ordre international au 21ème siècle.
 
Enacting Security in the Asia-Pacific: Discourse in the Making of an ASEAN Community
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Enacting the Security Community illuminates the central role of discourse in the making of security communities through a case study of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Despite decades of discussion, scholars of political science and international relations have long struggled to identify what kind of security community ASEAN is striving to become. In this book, I argue that talk about security is more than empty rhetoric: It is precisely through discourse that ASEAN is brought into being as a security community. I analyze the epic narratives that state and non-state actors tell about ASEAN's journey to becoming a security community, featuring a colorful cast of heroes and monsters. Chapters address a wide spectrum of current regional security concerns, from the South China Sea disputes to the Rohingya crisis, and nontraditional challenges like natural disasters and pandemics. Through fieldwork and in-depth interviews with practitioners, I demonstrate that discourse is key to sustaining regional organizations like ASEAN.

"The field of ASEAN studies has long suffered from the dearth of good scholarship written from critical social perspectives. This excellent effort by Stéphanie Martel goes a long way to rectify that situation. A must-read for all students of international affairs!"
—See Seng Tan, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies

"Methodologically robust and comprehensive, Enacting the Security Community offers a sharp and insightful examination of enduring questions about regionalism, governance, and global order. Stéphanie Martel has crafted a compelling and rich contribution to scholarship that deserves to be read widely."
—Laura Shepherd, University of Sydney

"This book is essential reading for scholars and practitioners seeking to comprehend the complex geometry of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ... Martel demonstrates a commanding knowledge and depth of understanding of current and historical debates on ASEAN. Moreover, the author showcases how these debates connect to wider areas of interest in International Relations."
—Catherine Jones, International Affairs
​The research on which this book is based has also led to two peer-reviewed articles in major journals in IR.

Abstract: This article contributes to ongoing debates on security community-building in IR by focusing on the productive role of discursive contestation in this process. It builds on recent work associated with the “practice” turn, discourse theory, and the study of security communities in the Global South to propose a new understanding of how the diversification of security governance impacts security community-building. The article develops an original discourse-based approach that conceptualizes security community-building as a polysemic, omnidirectional, and contested process in which social agents debate the meaning of security and the boundaries of community. It applies this approach to the case of ASEAN to show how contestation over the organization’s identity as a security community “in the making” takes place along two dimensions. First, different (and potentially incompatible) versions of the community compete for dominance. Second, contestation also unfolds “internally”, among social agents who agree on which version ought to prevail. I illustrate this part of the argument through an examination of the debate over ASEAN’s identity as a “people-centered” community. The demonstration is supported by the analysis of “texts” enacted in the discursive field where the security community is talked into existence, as well as interviews with practitioners. Abstract: ‘Non-traditional security’ (NTS) is prominently featured in the agenda of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and other ASEAN-led institutions in the Asia-Pacific. ‘NTS’ brings together a series transnational and non-military security threats that are considered common among regional states, urgent for them to attend to, and non-sensitive all at the same time. This a priori makes it a self-evident focus of attempts to bring regional security cooperation ‘to a higher plane’. However, this paper reveals that the uncontroversial character of NTS is overestimated, by shedding light on the co-existence of divergent – and potentially contradictory – interpretations of its meaning and implications in ASEAN and the wider region. In a context where ASEAN's relevance to the pursuit of regional security is increasingly being measured against its (in)ability to provide a coherent approach to security challenges that affect the region, the contested nature of NTS has important implications for the grouping's resilience in the twenty-first century.

Multilateral Diplomacy as Practice: Identity, Contest and Change in Asia-Pacific Regionalism

Multilateralism increasingly occurs on a regional basis and in venues not primarily controlled by the West. As a result, what counts as appropriate diplomatic practice is the terrain of increasing contestation. This is the core focus of this research project, which studies the impact of contestation over diplomatic practice on the resilience of multilateral institutions. At the empirical level, I focus on the Indo-Pacific and the case of ASEAN in particular as a prime example of this emerging but understudied trend in regional and global governance. This project is the next step in my broader research program on the evolution of multilateral governance in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific, which builds on areas of inquiry arising from doctoral and post-doctoral research. It draws on recent debates in the International Relations literature on the role of discourse and practice in the social construction of world politics, and makes empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions to the study of global governance, multilateralism, and diplomacy. Its main objective is to develop a new framework to better account for the role of contestation in the resilience of multilateral institutions beyond the West. I will achieve this objective by conducting a detailed analysis of key instances of contestation in the recent evolution of ASEAN, supported by semi-directed interviews with practitioners of Indo-Pacific multilateralism.

Abstract: The supposedly fixed set of norms within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), commonly referred to as the “ASEAN way,” is both celebrated and maligned as a key element of Southeast Asian diplomacy. In this article, we contest this orthodoxy through a practitioner-near account of ASEAN diplomatic norms in practice. We find that the “ASEAN way” is best understood as a rhetorical commonplace, a well-established topological resource that social agents use to advance and contest claims of competent diplomatic practice in the ASEAN community of practice. We build on and bridge insights from norm contestation, practice theory, and discourse literatures to develop an original framework for the study of contestation in communities of practice. Drawing from documentary evidence and 61 interviews with practitioners of ASEAN diplomacy, we illustrate our argument by examining contestation in practice in the context of the organization’s response to the Rohingya crisis and the South China Sea disputes.

***This article won the 2019 Best Paper Award and 2019 Best New Scholar Award from the ISA Asia-Pacific Region.
 Communities of practice (CoPs) are important sites of social interaction and are of growing concern in international relations. Much attention has been devoted to examining the existence and effect of these communities, and the kinds of practices and identities they coalesce around. Relatively less attention has been afforded to the relations between a CoP and what lies outside of it. In this article we examine encounters at the boundaries of CoPs. Empirically, we examine the boundaries and interactions of a community of diplomatic practice in the context of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as regional officials engage with extra-regional diplomats and “dialogue partners” operating within and alongside the organization. We find that the “boundary work” of these interactions are important sites of social interaction that constitute communities in important ways and make possible meaningful changes in identity and behavior. More broadly, we show that ASEAN’s unique position as a hub of a multilateral architecture that extends to a wider state membership provides prime terrain to inquire about what happens in liminal spaces of encounter between social agents of varied communities. To advance our claims, we draw on sixty-one semi-structured interviews with regional and extra-regional officials in Jakarta and elsewhere in the region, alongside analysis of public statements from diplomatic practitioners.
  • n.d. "Returning Discourse to the Practice Turn: The Contested Practice of Diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific Community", journal article in preparation.
Abstract: While the “practice turn” and discourse scholarship have mostly evolved on separate paths in IR, the possibility of building a bridge between them has been increasingly emphasized. This exercise, however, typically takes place under terms that implicitly favour the “practice turn” by reproducing a false duality between practice and discourse, and misconstruing the latter. This paper adopts a different view, suggesting that a return to discourse can shed new light on the power dynamics at play in defining what counts as competent practice within a particular field. This opens up space for considerations of gender and race that the “practice turn” brackets out. Building on earlier engagements of the “practice turn” from a discourse perspective, the paper critically reviews recent attempts at finding a “via media” between the two theoretical strands. It then grounds this assessment in empirical context through an examination of contestation over competent practice in the Asia-Pacific diplomatic community. The paper finds that a commitment to “background knowledge” is not necessary to account for how the “struggle over mastery” (Pouliot 2010;2016) plays out in a diplomatic field, and that the way in which discourse is currently incorporated into the study of diplomatic practice is unduly constricted.

Competing Narratives on the Rules-Based International Order In and Beyond the "Indo-Pacific"

I am developing a new project on the battle of narratives surrounding the "crisis" of the rules-based international order. The first step in this project resulted in a policy paper which I am currently in the process of adapting for submission to a scholarly journal.
  • 2020. “Unpacking the Crisis of the Rules-Based International Order: Competing Hero Narratives and Indo-Pacific Alternatives.” DSFG Working Paper. Online: https://uwaterloo.ca/defence-security-foresight-group/sites/ca.defence-security-foresight-group/files/uploads/files/dsfg_workingpaper_martel_rbio.pdf
  • n.d. “Unpacking the Crisis of the Rules-Based International Order: Competing Hero Narratives and Indo-Pacific Alternatives," journal article in preparation.
Abstract: There is a broad consensus today that the "rules-based international order" (RBIO) is facing an unprecedented crisis. This situation has led to a proliferation of calls to protect, improve, or reform the RBIO to ensure its resilience in an evolving global landscape. Underlying most of these calls is a view of the RBIO as a self-evident set of rules and institutions, with a fixed, consensual meaning. In practice, the RBIO is much less consensual than it seems. This article argues that the "crisis" of the RBIO involves a clash of narratives about what a legitimate order ought to look like, who gets to be situated within or outside of it, and who is in a position to claim the authority of making this distinction. I distinguish between two types of RBIO narratives currently on display which advance specific representations of the heroes and villains of the RBIO story. While some narratives rely on radical Othering, others, such as those currently emerging from the “Indo-Pacific”, eschew radical Othering, introduce benevolent anti-heroes, and are better able to gather support from a broad diversity of stakeholders. Instead of reducing the crisis of the RBIO to a clash of material interests and/or ideational factors, this article shows that a focus on the power of narratives can improve our understanding of this "crisis," by making the RBIO strange instead of taking it for granted. 

The regionalization of Women, Peace and Security

This collaborative project (funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant) with Stéfanie von Hlatky (PI) and Yolande Bouka investigates variations in regional approaches to the WPS agenda to explain why international organizations, namely NATO, ASEAN, and the AU, and their member states, approach WPS implementation differently at regional, national, and local levels of security governance. We ask: what are the regional logics that inform the design and implementation of the WPS agenda? To answer this question, we adopt a “communities of practice” approach to account for the multiplicity of actors that define security practices in various regional contexts, which ultimately impact how the WPS agenda is adapted and carried out. As an alliance, NATO values cohesion to manage joint activities effectively across operational settings. Its implementation of the WPS agenda is thus decidedly militarized. On the other hand, WPS implementation in the context of ASEAN and the other regional fora in which it exercises institutional “centrality” is still incipient and is tied to the organization’s existing approach to security, which emphasizes non-military and transnational issues. Finally, in Africa, where recent decades of conflict have driven much of the United Nations’ (UN) work on WPS, the AU’s experience has been primarily focused on the intersection of gender equality, development and the achievement of sustainable peace on the continent. This project analyzes how differentiated approaches to WPS impact the discourses and practices that inform these organizations’ day-to-day activities.
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This project has already resulted in a scholarly journal article in which I am the lead author:
  • with Jennifer Mustapha and Sarah E. Sharma. 2022. “Women, Peace and Security governance in the Asia–Pacific: a multi-scalar field of discourse and practice." International Affairs 98(2): 727–746.
Abstract: Although the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is 20 years old, it has only just taken off in the Asia-Pacific. Recently, more states in the region are articulating formal WPS national action plans. Regional institutions have begun adopting joint statements on WPS, signalling an emerging regional take on the global WPS agenda. Expert diplomacy networks are prudently investing in this new facet of the regional security dialogue. Importantly however, outside of these elite-dominated venues, the intersections between gender and security are not a new focus. Civil society actors in the region have long been active in various aspects of the WPS agenda in ways that are autonomous and distinct from how the agenda is promoted by governments and in formal regional organizations. Within this broader context, new opportunities for engagement in the WPS agenda are also arising. This paper maps out the ongoing emergence of a regional, multi-scalar field of practice around WPS. It analyses how dynamics of diffusion, localization, and resistance unfold in various regional spaces of conversation around WPS. The paper argues that new areas of ambiguity, friction, and tension are emerging as competing meanings of the intersection between gender and security are developed, negotiated, and opposed. ​

In addition to these major projects, I have published and in progress work on a number of additional, collaborative projects. ​You can find the complete list of my publications in my C.V., following this link.