NUPI skole

Scientific article

Published:

Stories we live by: the rise of Historical IR and the move to concepts

Written by

Halvard Leira
Research Director, Research Professor
Oliver Kessler

Ed.

CRIA.jpeg

Summary:

Scholars of the humanities and social sciences are necessarily storytellers. Thus, crafting narratives is an inescapable feature of the practice of International Relations scholarship. We tell stories about the past to orient ourselves in the present and envision the future. Historical International Relations has greatly expanded the repertoire of available narrative elements. However, when we read the past through the prism of our present, we risk closing down opportunities for different ways of imagining both the present and the future. In this article, we acknowledge the advances made in HIR over the last decades but suggest that a closer engagement with conceptual history would enhance its potential even further, making it possible to explore how a wider space of experience can also widen our horizon of expectations.

Themes

  • Historical IR

Written by

Halvard Leira
Research Director, Research Professor
Oliver Kessler

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