Courses
I currently teach undergraduate and graduate courses I developed on World Politics, International Relations Theory, International Relations of the Asia/Indo-Pacific, and Global Governance. My teaching interests include qualitative and interpretative methods, world politics, critical approaches to International Relations, International Security Studies, Regional/International Institutions, and World Politics in Imaginative Fiction.
I am the sole 2019-2020 recipient of the Frank Knox Award for Excellence in Teaching. Each year, the Alma Mater Society of Queen's University honours professors who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to the education of students of Queen's University through their teaching excellence. The award is the highest honour given to instructors of Queen's by students.
Undergraduate
Introduction to World Politics (POLS 261)
This course provides an introduction to politics as a global phenomenon, and to International Relations (a.k.a. "IR") as the discipline dedicated to the study of world politics. It discusses the evolution of the contemporary international system, and offers an overview of the main perspectives that can be used to make sense of world politics. It looks into how key issues and issue-areas might be considered from various angles and types of explanation, drawing from case studies for practical illustration. The course covers a broad array of concerns that structure the conduct of world politics in the 21st century, ranging from causes of conflict and insecurity to prospects for peace, cooperation, and the development of global community. Weekly topics include: The Evolution of the International System, Traditional and Critical Approaches to International Relations, International Order and its Discontents, The Meaning(s) of Security, How Gender and Race Shape World Politics, International Law and Global Justice, International Organizations, Multilateralism and Diplomacy, Wicked Problems in a Globalized World, and the Future(s) of World Politics. Enrolment: 200.
International Relations Theory (POLS 360)
The overarching objective of this course is to build students' general understanding of the main approaches, concepts, debates, and subfields that shape the evolution of International Relations (IR) Theory, and how they can help us make sense of the ways in which world politics unfold in practice. The course examines the similarities and differences between and within various theoretical strands in IR, and provides an overview of how these are reproduced in the study of international security, international organizations, and foreign policy. It initiates students to key meta-theoretical debates about levels of analysis, methodology, and the historiography of the field of IR. Throughout the course, students will develop their ability to mobilize theoretical concepts as tools for the analysis of contemporary cases and practical issues of international politics, and to critically assess the relevance, advantages, and shortcomings of different approaches for the study of world politics. Enrolment: 60.
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (POLS 460)
This seminar will introduce students to major issues and debates shaping the study and practice of international relations in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Asia/Indo-Pacific. Throughout the term, students will be introduced to and draw from academic and non-academic texts by a diverse pool of scholars, experts, and practitioners as well as broader theoretical and conceptual debates in the discipline to help them reflect upon recent and ongoing development in the international/regional politics of the Asia-Pacific. Topics covered in the course include: power relations in the region, multilateralism, the role of non-state actors in regional governance, –traditional, non-traditional, and human– security issues, etc. Enrolment: 25.
Graduate
Approaches to Global Governance (POLS 867)
This course provides an overview of current approaches, debates, and challenges in the study of international institutions, global governance, and the constitution and evolution of global order in International Relations. This seminar will examine and contrast a diversity of perspectives on the role of international organizations, states, and non-state actors with various forms of influence over how authority flows in world politics. It will discuss ideas, discourses and patterns pertaining to the maintenance, contestation, and transformation of global governance at different levels of analysis. Enrolment: 12.
Supervision
I offer robust supervision and mentoring to all my students. I discuss mutual expectations head on, and help students build a plan of work tailored to their professional goals. I involve students in all of my research activities –drafting literature reviews, developing grant proposals, data collection and analysis, fieldwork, knowledge mobilization, research planning, and co-authoring – thus providing meaningful professional development. I support students interested in pursuing non-academic careers by sharing opportunities, involving them in practitioner networks, and providing information about career prospects in public service, think tanks, and civil society. I give regular and detailed feedback on my students’ academic work. I provide opportunities for peer-to-peer mentoring, including through writing retreats (virtual or in-person) with my research team, where we update each other on our research activities, provide input on conference presentations, academic publishing, job interviews, research ethics, methodology, etc. and keep each other accountable. I also have 1:1 meetings with students on a regular basis and according to their needs.
In addition to projects which align with my current and past research interests, I am open to supervising PhD students on projects that:
Current and Past Supervisions:
Honours
Jesse Martin (2018-2019)
Tanisha Amarakoon (2019-2020)
Pamela Phan (2019-2020)
Emily Wilson (2020-2021)
James Taptelis (2020-2021)
Rhianna Hamilton (2020-2021)
Arthur Smith-Windsor (2020-2021)
MA
Kathleen Rankin (2019-2020)
Scott Tang (2019-2020)
Xijing Huang (2020-2021)
PhD
Emma Fingler (2020-...)
Bella Aung (2020-...)
Post-Doc
Michael Murphy (2022-...)
Caroline Dunton (2023-...)
Teaching Philosophy
My overarching goal as a teacher is to ensure students are equipped to make sense of world politics in a way that reflects the diversity and pluralism of International Relations (IR) as a thriving field of study. In this regard, my research and service contributions both inform and are informed by my teaching practice. I encourage my students to challenge their assumptions, to look at the world from different perspectives, and to be able to fluently speak across divides between approaches, methods, and positions. I firmly believe that such skills are not only transferable across domains and career paths, but also the root of more ethical and effective policy, and ultimately crucial to the health of a democratic society. I implement my overall teaching philosophy through four main pedagogical commitments. First, I am not merely aiming to bridge the proverbial gap between theory and practice, but to push students to question the notion that there is such a divide in the first place. My goal is to convince them that our understanding of the practice of world politics is always informed by pre-existing assumptions that need to be questioned and put in context. Second, I am deeply committed to making the IR curriculum more representative of a diversity of perspectives and experiences of world politics. Third, I am committed to centering the agency of students in their learning through innovative active-learning strategies and assignments. Fourth, I practice an ethics of care in my teaching, supervision, and mentorship activities, tailored to the needs of the diverse community of students who make up the next generation of experts in world politics.
Unsettling the theory v. practice distinction
One of the first things I realized as an educator is the importance of meeting students where they are while also being conscious of the variety of knowledge and experience in the study and practice of world politics they bring to class. Many of the students who seek out the classes I teach do so out of pragmatic interests in the daily operation of world politics, but also because they are attracted to the broad catalogue of approaches IR offers to better understand these phenomena. Striking this balance among students’ interests is not easy, but I have learned over the years how to better use a mix of assigned readings, lecture, reflective assignments, self-assessments, and active-learning strategies to support students in meeting their learning goals. I constantly encourage students to reflect about the ways in which their assumptions, positionality, lived experience, and personality traits inform how they look at world politics, and guide them as they try on different “lenses” for fit on their own terms, if only temporarily. This also allows me to pique the interest of students who end up in my courses because they had no other choice or by happenstance, but often end up developing a new, unexpected interest in the field as a result. Whenever I can, I relay practical experiences I have had through my engagement of our foreign service, Global Affairs and National Defence, the military, and civil society actors in the context of my research and outreach activities, and connect them with course content. I work with students to develop their versatility in approaching key issues on the news cycle, as well as specific problems they are interested in from various angles.
Relocating the margins of IR into the “canon”
As an IR scholar with an area focus on Southeast Asia and an unconventional approach to the study of world politics, I have long been intuitively committed in my research to highlight actors, perspectives, and experiences that have typically been considered marginal and remain underrepresented in this field. This commitment, however, has not always transpired as clearly in my teaching. As many professors do, especially at the start of their career, I initially taught the field as I had been taught myself. As such, my courses would center “great debates,” “founding fathers,” and key figureheads of the “big three” paradigms of realism, liberalism, and –to a lesser extent–constructivism. I did not spend much time in class interrogating the reasons why “the canon” looked the way it did, what politics this outcome hid, let alone how it might be transformed. As I developed more confidence and deeper knowledge of the diversity of the field over the years, my teaching evolved. Soon after I was hired at Queen’s, I embarked on a gradual (and still ongoing) process of re-envisioning how I had initially approached the IR curriculum in my own courses to better center alternative perspectives, scholarship from underrepresented groups, and to unpack the gendered, racist, and colonial foundations of the field. Striking a balance that is neither status quo nor tabula rasa, between teaching students what they need to be considered proficient in a particular field on the one hand, and questioning, challenging, and ultimately reinventing the “canon” and historiography of the field on the other, is not easy, and an ongoing challenge I continue to devote much attention to. In fact, I now openly discuss this dilemma in class, and at all levels, to engage students in the enterprise. These efforts tie in with conversations I contributed to initiating among IR Faculty on the curriculum soon after I was hired, which benefitted from a broader momentum around diversifying and decolonizing the IR “discipline” that intensified in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and initiatives around truth and reconciliation in Canada.
Centering student agency in the learning process
In the classroom, I work to equip my students with the tools of critical inquiry and learning by doing by centering their agency in the learning process. I have developed several innovative active-learning activities that help students understand the practical utility of foundational concepts and theories and link course content to personal experience. I use “IR” versions of well-known boardgames (e.g. Cards Against Humanity, Trivial Pursuit) as review activities in preparation for exams, which allow students to consolidate what they have learned in a collaborative way. I also developed several simulations that lead students to apply course materials to practical scenarios. The “Teaching Innovation” section of this dossier provides more details on these activities.
Addressing the needs of a diverse community of students
In my teaching, I seek to render the implicit codes and norms of higher education explicit so that all students have access to equal opportunities and are equipped with the tools they need to realize their potential and professional goals, whether in academia or in other career paths. I tailor my teaching, supervision and mentorship activities to make sure that students from underrepresented and otherwise marginalized groups can realize their academic and professional potential. I remind myself to avoid assuming prior knowledge of key concepts or the informal codes and norms of higher education that make up the “hidden curriculum.” My approach includes providing practical tips to students that are transferable to other courses. I also pay active attention to systemic and personal challenges students may experience in meeting course expectations, outlining ways to overcome these challenges tailored to specific groups of students (e.g. women, BIPOC, first-generation students, students with disabilities, non-native English speakers, etc.). I explicitly address impostor syndrome and performance anxiety, both in class and during office hours. I work to provide a safe environment with incentives for students to test new ideas and hone their communication skills. I make students work in smaller groups and provide feedback on participation to increase the self-confidence of those typically at a disadvantage in a competitive classroom environment, and to develop constructive leadership and listening skills among the more extrovert students. My assessment of student participation involves a reward system through which students benefit from contributing to others’ success. These practices also help me foster a peer-based support system for students, which is key to academic success but has effectively dissolved during the COVID-19 pandemic and is proving hard to rebuild.
Teaching Innovation
The development of original teaching materials and active-learning activities is key to the implementation of my teaching philosophy. It fosters student’s agency in the learning process, and ensures that what they learn in my courses has a lasting impact. It also caters to the needs of a diverse community of students, while allowing them to make practical sense of a broad variety of concepts and approaches, including those they tend to be less familiar with coming into my courses.
This section outlines specific teaching innovation strategies, activities, and materials I have developed for each course. Some of these active-learning activities rely on online teaching technologies (Perusall, Feedback Fruits, etc.) acquired by the university in the context of remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, but that I have continued to use since returning to in-person instruction.
POLS 360 (International Relations Theory)
In this course, I have drawn from the Index prepared by Active Learning in Political Science to develop innovative activities that support students in making concrete and practical sense of complex concepts and theories. I use a variety of short games, online quizzes, and polls to prompt students to link course content to fictional and real-world scenarios. I developed an original playlist for the course as a basis for class discussions. I also use “IR” versions of well-known boardgames (e.g. Trivial Pursuit; Cards Against Humanity) as review exercises to help prepare students for examinations. Further, I have developed several original creative writing assignments for this course.
In the context of COVID-19, I developed 12 online modules in Rise 360 to support asynchronous learning. In addition to text-based content and short video lectures, these modules include visuals (images, gifs, etc.), video content, knowledge checks, quizzes, and scenario-based exercises. I then adapted these online modules so that I could continue to use them after a return to in-person teaching, as a way to support my flipped classroom approach.
The following list breaks down some of the specific activities I have developed for this course:
- An “IR is Like Dating” class exercise where students are asked to discuss possible reasons for a break-up, which are then classified (by me) under different boxes that are revealed to be IR theories at the end of the exercise
- A “Song of the Week” playlist that exclusively features BIPOC artists. Students discuss in class how course content relates to the lyrics and video of each song
- A weekly reflective journal assignment where students are encouraged to answer specific prompts about their impressions of course materials
- A weekly “What kind of IR scholar are you?” personality quiz where students are asked to answer prompts that are meant to help them discover their own theoretical and methodological inclinations by linking course content to situations they encounter in their personal lives
- An “IR Cards Against Humanity” recap exercise where teams of students make associations between cards featuring key concepts, theories, and authors, then vote and justify their choices
- A movie analysis of “Black Panther” drawing from course materials. This written assignment also involves an online peer review component
- An in-class group exercise where students apply the tools of narrative analysis to a foreign policy speech;
- A 1h30 simulation on “International Organizations and Zombies” where teams of students build coalitions and develop, negotiate, and vote on resolutions in a fictional multilateral forum
- An “exquisite corpse” class exercise during which students write a story together in sequence, based only on the end of the previous sentence. This is followed by a discussion on the concept of security
- An “IR Trivial Pursuit” recap exercise in preparation for the final exam, where teams of students answer questions about course content organized into separate categories
POLS 460 (International Relations of the Asia-Pacific)
In this course, I developed a 3-week original simulation that requires students to apply knowledge of how diplomacy is carried out in practice in the Asia-Pacific to a real-world scenario: the South China Sea Disputes. Students draw from video lectures and background materials to work on a position paper. They then embody diplomats from China and Southeast Asia as they engage in public diplomacy and negotiate behind closed doors. The synopsis for the simulation is adapted each year to reflect the latest developments on the ground. Feedback from students regularly emphasize how this exercise allowed them to appreciate the difficulty of negotiating a peaceful solution to situations of protracted international conflict, and the level of skill required even when resolution remains out of sight. This simulation was the focus of a peer-reviewed Spotlight article in PS: Political Science & Politics I co-authored with three of the course’s undergraduate students. The synopsis of the simulation module is available here.
I have also developed other innovative teaching strategies for this course:
- A collaborative assignment where students research the foreign policy of Asia-Pacific states and share their findings with the group
- A scenario-based exercise where students put themselves in the shoes of real practitioners and are asked to reflect on how they might behave in particular situations based on their profiles
- An exercise where students compare maps of different representations of the region
- A crowdsourcing exercise where students are asked to draw from their own experience of insecurity, discuss how it is distinct from “normal life” and how their definition may or may not align with regional perspectives
POLS 867 (Approaches to Global Governance)
In this course:
- I developed an online peer review assignment
- I introduced options for voluntary asynchronous participation for students who wished to make up for a weaker in-class participation that week: 1) taking notes of seminar discussions to share with other students; 2) submitting a short written reflection after a week has concluded to identify key take-away points, take stock of where the course is at, and help the group transition into the next week; 3) using creative skills to produce visual content, short videos, memes, or sketches that illustrates course content, or; 4) finding a song to add to a course playlist and providing a one-page summary (or equivalent in a video or audio recording) to the group of how the song connects to course content;
- I developed a “counter-point analysis” option for class discussions. Each week, instead of reading the assigned book, a student instead elects to read only the book’s introductory chapter, and provide a critical reflection of 3 suggested readings. The student therefore provides additional points of discussion, flags interesting materials for other students to read on their own, and identify sources that they can use for the research paper assignment.
- I developed an “Email the Author” option where students, instead of submitting a weekly memo, can elect once to email the author of a book they especially liked (and briefly explain why) based on a template email I provide them.
- The book review assignment for this course includes the option of submitting the assignment to a journal. If they are successful, students get a bonus on the peer review assignment. I accompany students who elect to pursue this option throughout the process of identifying a suitable journal, sending an expression of interest, and then revising their review prior to submission. This is a great way for PhD students, in particular, to learn about this process (and add a scholarly publication on their CV).
Contributions to I-EDIAA
As an educator, I am committed to furthering Indigenization, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Anti-Racism (I-EDIAA) through my teaching practice. My joining of the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University coincided with the initiation of regular discussions among IR colleagues on diversifying and decolonizing the IR curriculum. In this context, I actively contributed to revising and updating the list of readings assigned to students in preparation of the IR field exam. I also oversaw the creation of a resource bank on “Race, BIPOC and Global South Perspectives on International Relations.” This tool, featured on the Department’s webpage, is developed collaboratively since 2020 by IR Faculty and students at Queen’s, as well as colleagues from other institutions. It currently consists of a .pdf document with references and short descriptions of 286 (as of July 2023) scholarly and other resources (e.g. blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc.) as well as a self-enrolled online course that acts as a repository providing direct access to each resource to the Queen’s community. Topics covered include anti-racism in higher education (with a focus on Political Studies), Race and Racism in IR, IR of the Global South, Indigenous Perspectives on IR, and the historiography of the field, among others. The resource bank also features resources that are more specifically relevant for research and teaching on various subfields, issues, and geographic areas. This project was launched in February 2023 through a roundtable discussion among students and Faculty, and was highlighted in a Queen’s Journal article. Finally, in my courses, I require my students to include a minimal number of references by underrepresented scholars in their written assignments.
I currently teach undergraduate and graduate courses I developed on World Politics, International Relations Theory, International Relations of the Asia/Indo-Pacific, and Global Governance. My teaching interests include qualitative and interpretative methods, world politics, critical approaches to International Relations, International Security Studies, Regional/International Institutions, and World Politics in Imaginative Fiction.
I am the sole 2019-2020 recipient of the Frank Knox Award for Excellence in Teaching. Each year, the Alma Mater Society of Queen's University honours professors who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to the education of students of Queen's University through their teaching excellence. The award is the highest honour given to instructors of Queen's by students.
Undergraduate
Introduction to World Politics (POLS 261)
This course provides an introduction to politics as a global phenomenon, and to International Relations (a.k.a. "IR") as the discipline dedicated to the study of world politics. It discusses the evolution of the contemporary international system, and offers an overview of the main perspectives that can be used to make sense of world politics. It looks into how key issues and issue-areas might be considered from various angles and types of explanation, drawing from case studies for practical illustration. The course covers a broad array of concerns that structure the conduct of world politics in the 21st century, ranging from causes of conflict and insecurity to prospects for peace, cooperation, and the development of global community. Weekly topics include: The Evolution of the International System, Traditional and Critical Approaches to International Relations, International Order and its Discontents, The Meaning(s) of Security, How Gender and Race Shape World Politics, International Law and Global Justice, International Organizations, Multilateralism and Diplomacy, Wicked Problems in a Globalized World, and the Future(s) of World Politics. Enrolment: 200.
International Relations Theory (POLS 360)
The overarching objective of this course is to build students' general understanding of the main approaches, concepts, debates, and subfields that shape the evolution of International Relations (IR) Theory, and how they can help us make sense of the ways in which world politics unfold in practice. The course examines the similarities and differences between and within various theoretical strands in IR, and provides an overview of how these are reproduced in the study of international security, international organizations, and foreign policy. It initiates students to key meta-theoretical debates about levels of analysis, methodology, and the historiography of the field of IR. Throughout the course, students will develop their ability to mobilize theoretical concepts as tools for the analysis of contemporary cases and practical issues of international politics, and to critically assess the relevance, advantages, and shortcomings of different approaches for the study of world politics. Enrolment: 60.
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (POLS 460)
This seminar will introduce students to major issues and debates shaping the study and practice of international relations in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Asia/Indo-Pacific. Throughout the term, students will be introduced to and draw from academic and non-academic texts by a diverse pool of scholars, experts, and practitioners as well as broader theoretical and conceptual debates in the discipline to help them reflect upon recent and ongoing development in the international/regional politics of the Asia-Pacific. Topics covered in the course include: power relations in the region, multilateralism, the role of non-state actors in regional governance, –traditional, non-traditional, and human– security issues, etc. Enrolment: 25.
Graduate
Approaches to Global Governance (POLS 867)
This course provides an overview of current approaches, debates, and challenges in the study of international institutions, global governance, and the constitution and evolution of global order in International Relations. This seminar will examine and contrast a diversity of perspectives on the role of international organizations, states, and non-state actors with various forms of influence over how authority flows in world politics. It will discuss ideas, discourses and patterns pertaining to the maintenance, contestation, and transformation of global governance at different levels of analysis. Enrolment: 12.
Supervision
I offer robust supervision and mentoring to all my students. I discuss mutual expectations head on, and help students build a plan of work tailored to their professional goals. I involve students in all of my research activities –drafting literature reviews, developing grant proposals, data collection and analysis, fieldwork, knowledge mobilization, research planning, and co-authoring – thus providing meaningful professional development. I support students interested in pursuing non-academic careers by sharing opportunities, involving them in practitioner networks, and providing information about career prospects in public service, think tanks, and civil society. I give regular and detailed feedback on my students’ academic work. I provide opportunities for peer-to-peer mentoring, including through writing retreats (virtual or in-person) with my research team, where we update each other on our research activities, provide input on conference presentations, academic publishing, job interviews, research ethics, methodology, etc. and keep each other accountable. I also have 1:1 meetings with students on a regular basis and according to their needs.
In addition to projects which align with my current and past research interests, I am open to supervising PhD students on projects that:
- adopt a constructivist, critical and/or interpretative approach to International Relations.
- focus of practices of security governance, conflict management and resolution, multilateral diplomacy and/or regionalism, particularly in the non-Western world
- inquire into the productive role of discourse in the social construction of world politics
- look at processes of security community-building in a globalized world
- propose to develop a theoretically-grounded examination of Asia-Pacific states and non-state actors in the transformation of world order
- aim to study the implementation of the women, peace, and security agenda in the Asia-Pacific
- inquire into climate security governance in East or Southeast Asia
Current and Past Supervisions:
Honours
Jesse Martin (2018-2019)
Tanisha Amarakoon (2019-2020)
Pamela Phan (2019-2020)
Emily Wilson (2020-2021)
James Taptelis (2020-2021)
Rhianna Hamilton (2020-2021)
Arthur Smith-Windsor (2020-2021)
MA
Kathleen Rankin (2019-2020)
Scott Tang (2019-2020)
Xijing Huang (2020-2021)
PhD
Emma Fingler (2020-...)
Bella Aung (2020-...)
Post-Doc
Michael Murphy (2022-...)
Caroline Dunton (2023-...)
Teaching Philosophy
My overarching goal as a teacher is to ensure students are equipped to make sense of world politics in a way that reflects the diversity and pluralism of International Relations (IR) as a thriving field of study. In this regard, my research and service contributions both inform and are informed by my teaching practice. I encourage my students to challenge their assumptions, to look at the world from different perspectives, and to be able to fluently speak across divides between approaches, methods, and positions. I firmly believe that such skills are not only transferable across domains and career paths, but also the root of more ethical and effective policy, and ultimately crucial to the health of a democratic society. I implement my overall teaching philosophy through four main pedagogical commitments. First, I am not merely aiming to bridge the proverbial gap between theory and practice, but to push students to question the notion that there is such a divide in the first place. My goal is to convince them that our understanding of the practice of world politics is always informed by pre-existing assumptions that need to be questioned and put in context. Second, I am deeply committed to making the IR curriculum more representative of a diversity of perspectives and experiences of world politics. Third, I am committed to centering the agency of students in their learning through innovative active-learning strategies and assignments. Fourth, I practice an ethics of care in my teaching, supervision, and mentorship activities, tailored to the needs of the diverse community of students who make up the next generation of experts in world politics.
Unsettling the theory v. practice distinction
One of the first things I realized as an educator is the importance of meeting students where they are while also being conscious of the variety of knowledge and experience in the study and practice of world politics they bring to class. Many of the students who seek out the classes I teach do so out of pragmatic interests in the daily operation of world politics, but also because they are attracted to the broad catalogue of approaches IR offers to better understand these phenomena. Striking this balance among students’ interests is not easy, but I have learned over the years how to better use a mix of assigned readings, lecture, reflective assignments, self-assessments, and active-learning strategies to support students in meeting their learning goals. I constantly encourage students to reflect about the ways in which their assumptions, positionality, lived experience, and personality traits inform how they look at world politics, and guide them as they try on different “lenses” for fit on their own terms, if only temporarily. This also allows me to pique the interest of students who end up in my courses because they had no other choice or by happenstance, but often end up developing a new, unexpected interest in the field as a result. Whenever I can, I relay practical experiences I have had through my engagement of our foreign service, Global Affairs and National Defence, the military, and civil society actors in the context of my research and outreach activities, and connect them with course content. I work with students to develop their versatility in approaching key issues on the news cycle, as well as specific problems they are interested in from various angles.
Relocating the margins of IR into the “canon”
As an IR scholar with an area focus on Southeast Asia and an unconventional approach to the study of world politics, I have long been intuitively committed in my research to highlight actors, perspectives, and experiences that have typically been considered marginal and remain underrepresented in this field. This commitment, however, has not always transpired as clearly in my teaching. As many professors do, especially at the start of their career, I initially taught the field as I had been taught myself. As such, my courses would center “great debates,” “founding fathers,” and key figureheads of the “big three” paradigms of realism, liberalism, and –to a lesser extent–constructivism. I did not spend much time in class interrogating the reasons why “the canon” looked the way it did, what politics this outcome hid, let alone how it might be transformed. As I developed more confidence and deeper knowledge of the diversity of the field over the years, my teaching evolved. Soon after I was hired at Queen’s, I embarked on a gradual (and still ongoing) process of re-envisioning how I had initially approached the IR curriculum in my own courses to better center alternative perspectives, scholarship from underrepresented groups, and to unpack the gendered, racist, and colonial foundations of the field. Striking a balance that is neither status quo nor tabula rasa, between teaching students what they need to be considered proficient in a particular field on the one hand, and questioning, challenging, and ultimately reinventing the “canon” and historiography of the field on the other, is not easy, and an ongoing challenge I continue to devote much attention to. In fact, I now openly discuss this dilemma in class, and at all levels, to engage students in the enterprise. These efforts tie in with conversations I contributed to initiating among IR Faculty on the curriculum soon after I was hired, which benefitted from a broader momentum around diversifying and decolonizing the IR “discipline” that intensified in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and initiatives around truth and reconciliation in Canada.
Centering student agency in the learning process
In the classroom, I work to equip my students with the tools of critical inquiry and learning by doing by centering their agency in the learning process. I have developed several innovative active-learning activities that help students understand the practical utility of foundational concepts and theories and link course content to personal experience. I use “IR” versions of well-known boardgames (e.g. Cards Against Humanity, Trivial Pursuit) as review activities in preparation for exams, which allow students to consolidate what they have learned in a collaborative way. I also developed several simulations that lead students to apply course materials to practical scenarios. The “Teaching Innovation” section of this dossier provides more details on these activities.
Addressing the needs of a diverse community of students
In my teaching, I seek to render the implicit codes and norms of higher education explicit so that all students have access to equal opportunities and are equipped with the tools they need to realize their potential and professional goals, whether in academia or in other career paths. I tailor my teaching, supervision and mentorship activities to make sure that students from underrepresented and otherwise marginalized groups can realize their academic and professional potential. I remind myself to avoid assuming prior knowledge of key concepts or the informal codes and norms of higher education that make up the “hidden curriculum.” My approach includes providing practical tips to students that are transferable to other courses. I also pay active attention to systemic and personal challenges students may experience in meeting course expectations, outlining ways to overcome these challenges tailored to specific groups of students (e.g. women, BIPOC, first-generation students, students with disabilities, non-native English speakers, etc.). I explicitly address impostor syndrome and performance anxiety, both in class and during office hours. I work to provide a safe environment with incentives for students to test new ideas and hone their communication skills. I make students work in smaller groups and provide feedback on participation to increase the self-confidence of those typically at a disadvantage in a competitive classroom environment, and to develop constructive leadership and listening skills among the more extrovert students. My assessment of student participation involves a reward system through which students benefit from contributing to others’ success. These practices also help me foster a peer-based support system for students, which is key to academic success but has effectively dissolved during the COVID-19 pandemic and is proving hard to rebuild.
Teaching Innovation
The development of original teaching materials and active-learning activities is key to the implementation of my teaching philosophy. It fosters student’s agency in the learning process, and ensures that what they learn in my courses has a lasting impact. It also caters to the needs of a diverse community of students, while allowing them to make practical sense of a broad variety of concepts and approaches, including those they tend to be less familiar with coming into my courses.
This section outlines specific teaching innovation strategies, activities, and materials I have developed for each course. Some of these active-learning activities rely on online teaching technologies (Perusall, Feedback Fruits, etc.) acquired by the university in the context of remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, but that I have continued to use since returning to in-person instruction.
POLS 360 (International Relations Theory)
In this course, I have drawn from the Index prepared by Active Learning in Political Science to develop innovative activities that support students in making concrete and practical sense of complex concepts and theories. I use a variety of short games, online quizzes, and polls to prompt students to link course content to fictional and real-world scenarios. I developed an original playlist for the course as a basis for class discussions. I also use “IR” versions of well-known boardgames (e.g. Trivial Pursuit; Cards Against Humanity) as review exercises to help prepare students for examinations. Further, I have developed several original creative writing assignments for this course.
In the context of COVID-19, I developed 12 online modules in Rise 360 to support asynchronous learning. In addition to text-based content and short video lectures, these modules include visuals (images, gifs, etc.), video content, knowledge checks, quizzes, and scenario-based exercises. I then adapted these online modules so that I could continue to use them after a return to in-person teaching, as a way to support my flipped classroom approach.
The following list breaks down some of the specific activities I have developed for this course:
- An “IR is Like Dating” class exercise where students are asked to discuss possible reasons for a break-up, which are then classified (by me) under different boxes that are revealed to be IR theories at the end of the exercise
- A “Song of the Week” playlist that exclusively features BIPOC artists. Students discuss in class how course content relates to the lyrics and video of each song
- A weekly reflective journal assignment where students are encouraged to answer specific prompts about their impressions of course materials
- A weekly “What kind of IR scholar are you?” personality quiz where students are asked to answer prompts that are meant to help them discover their own theoretical and methodological inclinations by linking course content to situations they encounter in their personal lives
- An “IR Cards Against Humanity” recap exercise where teams of students make associations between cards featuring key concepts, theories, and authors, then vote and justify their choices
- A movie analysis of “Black Panther” drawing from course materials. This written assignment also involves an online peer review component
- An in-class group exercise where students apply the tools of narrative analysis to a foreign policy speech;
- A 1h30 simulation on “International Organizations and Zombies” where teams of students build coalitions and develop, negotiate, and vote on resolutions in a fictional multilateral forum
- An “exquisite corpse” class exercise during which students write a story together in sequence, based only on the end of the previous sentence. This is followed by a discussion on the concept of security
- An “IR Trivial Pursuit” recap exercise in preparation for the final exam, where teams of students answer questions about course content organized into separate categories
POLS 460 (International Relations of the Asia-Pacific)
In this course, I developed a 3-week original simulation that requires students to apply knowledge of how diplomacy is carried out in practice in the Asia-Pacific to a real-world scenario: the South China Sea Disputes. Students draw from video lectures and background materials to work on a position paper. They then embody diplomats from China and Southeast Asia as they engage in public diplomacy and negotiate behind closed doors. The synopsis for the simulation is adapted each year to reflect the latest developments on the ground. Feedback from students regularly emphasize how this exercise allowed them to appreciate the difficulty of negotiating a peaceful solution to situations of protracted international conflict, and the level of skill required even when resolution remains out of sight. This simulation was the focus of a peer-reviewed Spotlight article in PS: Political Science & Politics I co-authored with three of the course’s undergraduate students. The synopsis of the simulation module is available here.
I have also developed other innovative teaching strategies for this course:
- A collaborative assignment where students research the foreign policy of Asia-Pacific states and share their findings with the group
- A scenario-based exercise where students put themselves in the shoes of real practitioners and are asked to reflect on how they might behave in particular situations based on their profiles
- An exercise where students compare maps of different representations of the region
- A crowdsourcing exercise where students are asked to draw from their own experience of insecurity, discuss how it is distinct from “normal life” and how their definition may or may not align with regional perspectives
POLS 867 (Approaches to Global Governance)
In this course:
- I developed an online peer review assignment
- I introduced options for voluntary asynchronous participation for students who wished to make up for a weaker in-class participation that week: 1) taking notes of seminar discussions to share with other students; 2) submitting a short written reflection after a week has concluded to identify key take-away points, take stock of where the course is at, and help the group transition into the next week; 3) using creative skills to produce visual content, short videos, memes, or sketches that illustrates course content, or; 4) finding a song to add to a course playlist and providing a one-page summary (or equivalent in a video or audio recording) to the group of how the song connects to course content;
- I developed a “counter-point analysis” option for class discussions. Each week, instead of reading the assigned book, a student instead elects to read only the book’s introductory chapter, and provide a critical reflection of 3 suggested readings. The student therefore provides additional points of discussion, flags interesting materials for other students to read on their own, and identify sources that they can use for the research paper assignment.
- I developed an “Email the Author” option where students, instead of submitting a weekly memo, can elect once to email the author of a book they especially liked (and briefly explain why) based on a template email I provide them.
- The book review assignment for this course includes the option of submitting the assignment to a journal. If they are successful, students get a bonus on the peer review assignment. I accompany students who elect to pursue this option throughout the process of identifying a suitable journal, sending an expression of interest, and then revising their review prior to submission. This is a great way for PhD students, in particular, to learn about this process (and add a scholarly publication on their CV).
Contributions to I-EDIAA
As an educator, I am committed to furthering Indigenization, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Anti-Racism (I-EDIAA) through my teaching practice. My joining of the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University coincided with the initiation of regular discussions among IR colleagues on diversifying and decolonizing the IR curriculum. In this context, I actively contributed to revising and updating the list of readings assigned to students in preparation of the IR field exam. I also oversaw the creation of a resource bank on “Race, BIPOC and Global South Perspectives on International Relations.” This tool, featured on the Department’s webpage, is developed collaboratively since 2020 by IR Faculty and students at Queen’s, as well as colleagues from other institutions. It currently consists of a .pdf document with references and short descriptions of 286 (as of July 2023) scholarly and other resources (e.g. blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc.) as well as a self-enrolled online course that acts as a repository providing direct access to each resource to the Queen’s community. Topics covered include anti-racism in higher education (with a focus on Political Studies), Race and Racism in IR, IR of the Global South, Indigenous Perspectives on IR, and the historiography of the field, among others. The resource bank also features resources that are more specifically relevant for research and teaching on various subfields, issues, and geographic areas. This project was launched in February 2023 through a roundtable discussion among students and Faculty, and was highlighted in a Queen’s Journal article. Finally, in my courses, I require my students to include a minimal number of references by underrepresented scholars in their written assignments.