My research at the intersection of international security and global governance focuses on security regionalism, multilateral diplomacy, and the role of discourse in the social construction of world politics. I have published in English and French in International Studies Quarterly, The Pacific Review, Pacific Affairs, L'Espace politique, and Monde Chinois, among others. I am currently working on two main inter-related projects, the most important of which is a book manuscript adapted from my doctoral dissertation, and 3 secondary projects.

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, The Pacific Review, Pacific Affairs, L'Espace politique, and Monde Chinois, entre autres. Je travaille actuellement à la réalisation de trois projets principaux, dont le plus important est un livre adapté de ma thèse de doctorat.
 
1. Enacting Security in the Asia-Pacific: Discourse in the Making of an ASEAN Community

I am adapting and expanding my doctoral research into a book manuscript entitled Enacting Security in the Asia-Pacific: Discourse in the Making of an ASEAN Community. The book develops an original discourse-based framework for the study of security community-building as a way to better our understanding of the polysemy of this process in the 21st century. I use the case of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a basis to highlight the omnidirectional and a-linear character of security community-building in practice. This markedly improves the ability of new insights emanating from a "thicker" kind of constructivist scholarship in International Relations to "travel" to the Global South and, more importantly, back to what is still treated as the geographical core of a "not so international" discipline. The book covers the whole spectrum of issues that make up the regional security governance agenda, from transnational crime to the South China Sea disputes as well as the Rohingya crisis. It looks at how actors from the main "tracks" of Asia-Pacific regionalism (official, expert/informal, and non-governmental) advance distinct and competing positions on the meaning of security and the boundaries of the regional community,  reproducing ASEAN's identity as a security community "in the making". It concludes that this is likely a never-ending process, and that the time is ripe for looking at ASEAN's characterization as a "talk shop" from a new angle that makes room for the productive power of discourse in world politics.

I have received funding from the Canadian Defence and Security Network to hold a book workshop, which will be held in the Fall of 2020.
  • n.d. Enacting Security in the Asia-Pacific: Discourse in the Making of an ASEAN Community, book mss. in preparation.

​This project has already led to two peer-reviewed articles in major journals in IR.

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.

  • 2020 (forthcoming). "The Polysemy of Security Community-Building: Towards a “People-Centered” Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)?", International Studies Quarterly. DOI: 10.1093/isq/sqaa040.
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.

2. 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 program, 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.

  • n.d., with Aarie Glas. “Debunking the ‘ASEAN Way’: The Contested Meaning and Practice of Diplomatic Norms in Southeast Asia", under review.
Abstract: The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as a diplomatic community of diverse member states, is often seen as grounded in a strict adhesion to a common set of diplomatic norms, central among them non-interference and consensus through consultation. The so-called “ASEAN Way” of diplomacy and conflict management is as much lauded as it is maligned, but it remains at the center of discussions over ASEAN’s resilience as a community of states. However, it is also recognized as a “loosely-used concept whose meaning remains vague and contested” (Acharya 2014). This paper addresses this contestation by bridging and building on insights from discourse theory and the “practice turn” in International Relations, as well as recent theoretical debates over norm contestation. We argue that the “ASEAN Way” is best understood as a rhetorical commonplace, around which a debate is currently unfolding over what counts as competent diplomatic practice among regional states. This debate is both a prolongation and a reconfiguration of long-standing divisions within ASEAN membership, as it pits different interpretations of what counts as appropriate diplomatic practice in ASEAN against one another. We document this contestation and its effects through an analysis of ASEAN’s response to recent developments in the South China Sea and the Rohingya Crisis.

***This article won the 2019 Best Paper Award and 2019 Best New Scholar Award from the ISA Asia-Pacific Region.

  • n.d. "Returning Discourse to the Practice Turn: The Contested Practice of Diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific Community", conference paper 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.

In addition to these major projects, I am currently developing secondary projects on:

3. Interpreting Maritime Disputes in the Asia-Pacific

Territorial disputes among states remain prevalent, particularly in the Asia-Pacific. While they are often reduced to a manifestation of competing material interests among states, this project looks at the South China Sea disputes and other bilateral conflicts in Southeast Asia from a different, interpretative perspective. It shows that participation to territorial disputes also serve as an important mechanism through which the identity of the state is performed and reproduced in practice. It points to the persistence of conventional modes of state territoriality through the emergence of innovative bordering practices, which serve as a way for actors to delineate, reproduce, and sometimes extend the contours of the national body in the name of the state beyond other understandings of where its boundaries ought to be.
  • n.d. with Edward Boyle. "Bordering Practices, Ontological Security, and Fluid State Bodies in the Asia-Pacific", article in preparation.
Abstract: This paper examines the bordering practices associated with contemporary maritime disputes in the East and South China Seas. Territorial disputes serve as an important mechanism through which state identity is performed, and innovative bordering practices are a means of maintaining state territoriality. Such practices serve as a way for state actors to delineate, reproduce, and sometimes extend the contours of the national body beyond conventional understandings. This paper will focus on one particular set of bordering practices, and analyse their effects through the lens of ontological security. The practices in question involve a series of claims made in connection with these disputes, including ‘core interest’, ‘maritime territory’, and ‘integral territory’. We argue that these articulations provide a means for states to attempt to stabilize and routinize understandings of their limits in response to anxiety generated by their participation in territorial disputes. As these novel bordering practices work to re-assert and re-routinize the stability of the state's maritime claims (and thus its self-identity) both internally and externally, they paradoxically expose their inherent fluidity. In addition, a focus on border practices allows us to unsettle the endogenous/exogenous divide in how ontological security has been understood in IR (Mitzen 2006; Steele 2008).

4. The Productive Role of Crisis in Institutional Resilience
  • n.d. with Anne-Laure Mahé, “(Re)Conceptualizing Institutional Resilience in World Politics: Insights from the Global South”, under review.
Abstract: The concept of resilience is widely used in current analysis of world politics. It has been applied to the study of international institutions, communities facing civil war and natural disasters, and authoritarian regimes. While it is generally mobilized to describe a situation where institutions are surprisingly sustained against otherwise dire prospects, it is typically used interchangeably with longevity, stability, or survival. This creates important analytical confusion in descriptions of the phenomena described as “resilience,” and more importantly, it tends to limit discussions of institutional resilience to the preservation of the status quo, under-appreciating the dynamic character of resilience in practice. Drawing from recent work on the concept of resilience in the study of world politics, we identify a need for a reconceptualization of resilience that makes more room for the study of crisis as a fundamental component of the resilience process. This paper argues that institutional resilience is best conceived as a process rooted in a co-constitutive relationship between crisis and adaptation. Furthermore, this requires an understanding of crisis as social “all the way down”. We illustrate this through the examination of a variety of resilient institutions from political regimes to international institutions, with special attention given to how this process unfolds in the Global South. The aim of this paper is to set the stage for the development of a new research agenda that can contribute to a better understanding of how institutions that are portrayed as frail and unstable not only survive, but transform over time.

5. Canadian Contributions to the Study of International Relations in the Global South
  • n.d. with J. Andrew Grant and Nadège Compaoré, "Embracing the Diversity of Canadian IR: A Genealogy of Canadian Contributions on the Social Constructedness of World Politics", R&R at International Studies Perspectives.

6. Competing Narratives on the Rules-Based International Order in the "Indo-Pacific"
 I am developping a new project on the battle of narratives surrounding the "crisis" of the rules-based international order. The first step in this project was the development of a policy paper for the Defence and Security Foresight Group, in which I co-led the Asia-Pacific Team. This paper discusses the battle of narratives that sees defenders of the liberal international order and big powers currently represented as challengers to this order promoting competing understandings of the "rules-based international order" and seeking to position themselves as a source of legitimate authority, while denying it to others. I also highlight the existence of alternative narratives on RBIO stemming from the "Indo-Pacific", which allows me to compare and contrast different types of RBIO narratives, which drawing from popular culture I refer to as "Marvel" and "Manga" narratives. I am currently adapting this policy paper into a journal article.
  • 2020 (forthcoming). “Unpacking the Crisis of the Rules-Based International Order: Competing Hero Narratives and Indo-Pacific Alternatives.” DSFG Working Paper.
  • n.d. “Unpacking the Crisis of the Rules-Based International Order: Competing Hero Narratives and Indo-Pacific Alternatives," journal article in preparation.

7. Gender, Peace and Security in the Asia-Pacific
I am launching a new collaborative project on gender, peace and security in the Asia-Pacific. I am pursuing this project as part of my role as both a Canadian representative at the ARF Eminent and Expert Persons Group and a Team Lead in the Defence and Security Foresight Group, but developping it further as a secondary research interest with the aim of publishing a peer-reviewed journal article. For now, this project takes the form of a conference paper in preparation for ISA 2021, as part of a panel I am convening on Gender, Peace and Security in the Global South.
  • n.d. with Jennifer Mustapha, Sarah Sharma and Isabelle Côté. “Contrasted Meanings and Practices of Gender, Peace, and Security in the Asia-Pacific: A Multi-Scalar Regional Analysis,” journal article (in preparation).

A previous research project looked at the securitization of drug trafficking and other forms of transnational crime in Southeast Asia. Publications deriving from this project are:
​You can find the complete list of my publications in my C.V., following this link.