Ann Towns

Summary

Ann Towns is professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg and director of the GenDip Program on the gender of diplomacy. She has a PhD in political science from the University of Minnesota (2004). She is a long-time collaborator at NUPI, where she is currently P.I. of REGEND, the regendering of diplomacy 1700-1900, with funding from the Norwegian Research Council.

Towns’ research centers on international order, histories of gender and state institutions, and the gender of diplomacy and foreign policy. A Wallenberg Academy Fellow 2014-2026, her research on diplomacy has received multiple international awards, most recently an International Studies Association Distinguished Scholar Award in 2026. Her book Imperial, Familial and Bureaucratic: The Gender Logics of Bilateral Diplomacy will be published by Oxford University Press in 2027.