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Co-Director of the Centre for Security Research (CeSeR)

Qualifications

• PhD, MA, Political Science (The Ohio State University)
• BA, Political Science (University of Oklahoma)

Biography

Juliet Kaarbo joined the Politics and International Relations department in 2011 as Senior Lecturer and was promoted to Professor with a Personal Chair in Foreign Policy in 2015. She served as Postgraduate Adviser for Politics & International Relations (2013-2016) and is the founding co-Director of CeSeR.  She is an Associate Editor for  British Journal of Politics and International Relations.  

Julie previously held posts at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and the University of Kansas where she served as Director of Faculty Programs in the Office of International Programs, and as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science. In 2009, she was awarded a Visiting Scientist Fellowship by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. 

In 2018, Julie was named the  Distinguished Scholar in Foreign Policy Analysis for the Foreign Policy Analysis section of the International Studies Association.  She was elected as a Vice President of the International Studies Association for 2022-23.   In 2019, Julie won the Best Supervisor Award at the University of Edinburgh.

Research Interests

Julie’s research focuses on political psychology, leadership and decision making, group dynamics, foreign policy analysis, foreign policy roles, and parliaments and coalitions in foreign policy. Areas of specialization include German, British, Israeli, Dutch, Japanese, Turkish, and U.S. foreign policy. Her research has appeared in various journals, including International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, British Journal of Politics and International Relations,  International Studies Review, Political Psychology, Cooperation and Conflict, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Leadership Quarterly. She has co-written multiple versions of two textbooks -- Global Politics and Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective.

Selective Recent Publications

• ‘Breaking Bad: New Directions for Leader Personality Research in FPA,' Research Note in International Affairs (forthcoming).
•  The Oxford Handbook of Political Executives, with Andeweg, Elgie, Helms, & Müller-Rommel (Eds.) Oxford University Press  (2020)
• ‘Turkish Leaders and Their Foreign Policy Decision Making Style From a Comparative Perspective: A Multi-Method Approach’, with Esra Cuhadar, Baris Kesgin, & Binnur Ozkececi-Taner,  Turkish Studies (2020).
• ‘British Foreign Policy After Brexit:  Losing Europe and Finding a Role’, with Kai Oppermann & Ryan Beasley,  International Relations (2020).
• 'Party Politics at the Water’s Edge:  Contestation of Military Operations in Europe', with Wolfgang Wagner, Anna Herranz-Surralles & Falk Ostermann  European Political Science Review (2018).
• 'Casting for a Sovereign Role: Socialising an Aspirant State in the Scottish Independence Referendum,'  with Ryan Beasley, European Journal of International Relations (2018).
• ‘Prime Minister Leadership Style and the Role of Parliament in Security Policy,’ British Journal of Politics and International Relations (2018).
• Domestic Role Contestation, Foreign Policy, and International Relations, Editor, with Cristian Cantir, Routledge (2016).
•  ‘A Foreign Policy Analysis Perspective on the Domestic Politics Turn in IR’ International Studies Review (2015).  

Personalities of Political World Leaders     This research includes several tracks, including  a collaborative project on Turkish leaders and a new project (Breaking Bad) on how leader personalities change over time. 

National Roles:  Contestation & Socialisation    This research extends my prior theoretical and empirical analyses of internal disagreements over national role conceptions and their influence on foreign policy.  A collaborative project examines the relationship between sovereignty and roles in the Brexit referendum.  

Coalition Cabinets, Political Parties, & Parliaments in Foreign Policy     My research continues to examine the effects of coalition cabinets and political party disagreements on foreign policy. I am part of a research team doing comparative analyses of parties’ positions on military deployments and the politicization of security policy in parliamentary votes. We have created and extended a database of deployment votes:  http://deploymentvotewatch.eu/.

The Future of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA)     Following my editorial work on the Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Foreign Policy Analysis, I am co- editing (with Cameron Thies) the Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis.  This Handbook aims to re-position FPA to a central analytic location within the study of International Relations.

Recent Professional Activities

Selective Expert Testimony

Written testimony submitted to the Treaty Scrutiny Inquiry, UK House of Lords, July 2018.

Written testimony submitted to the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee's Inquiry on Global Britain, July 2018.

Invited witness for the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee’s Inquiry on the Foreign Policy Implications of and for a Separate Scotland, London, January 2013.  

Selective Blogs

 ‘Leader Personalities:  Trump vs. Biden’, with Ryan Beasley and Consuelo Thiers, Duck of Minerva, 27 October 2020

'As Others See Us:  The Striking Similarities between Brexit and Scottish Independence Debates,’ Herald Scotland, 21 June 2016

Recent Interviews

Duck of Minerva podcast, 2020

The Hayseed Scholar podcast, 2020

Topics interested in supervising

foreign & security policy * political psychology * political leadership * group decision-making * parliamentary systems * the role of individuals and domestic politics in international relations

If you are interested in being supervised by Juliet Kaarbo, please see the links below for more information: