Dr Felix Rösch

About

Dr Rösch teaches on the BA International Relations and BA Politics and International Relations. He serves as Course Director for both courses. Dr Felix Rösch has supervised many undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations amongst others on questions relating to International Relations Theories, popular culture, aesthetics, and historical international politics.

Career overview

Felix studied at universities in Jena, Paris, and Newcastle and holds a PhD in Politics from Newcastle University. He is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA) and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS). He was a visiting scholar at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C., the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and Kansai University in Osaka.  

Research

Dr Rösch focuses in his research on the history of international political thought, emotions, and popular culture, concentrating on intercultural encounters between Europe, North America, and Japan in the 19th and 20th centuries. His work has appeared in many leading journals, such as Cooperation & Conflict, European Journal of International Relations, Ethics & International Affairs, International Studies Perspectives, and Review of International Studies. 

In doing so, he pursues an interdisciplinary approach in which he combines comparative political theory with international historiography and international political sociology, concentrating on three aspects:

First, Felix works on questions related to knowledge production and exchange in transcultural contexts. Global transformations in the 19th century have connected communities with often divergent ways of viewing the world and led to a series of challenges that nation-states cannot effectively deal with by themselves. His work investigates such exchanges both from within and outside the Western political sphere with a focus on the 19th and 20th centuries, aiming to identify prerequisites to provide for peaceful and mutually beneficial knowledge exchanges which open up spaces for dialogical learning that can effectively deal with these challenges in the 21st century.

Second, Felix is interested in encounters of difference with a particular focus on transatlantic relations and Japan. This includes studying and investigating practices and concepts that were developed in contrast to but also in cooperation with knowledge that often forcefully entered local contexts. A deeper understanding of this process will help to reconsider what connects people across differences and investigate possibilities of re-establishing universalism that accepts the antagonistic character of relations between and within societies. 

Finally, he contributes to the aesthetic and emotional turns in IR. It is mainly through every-day experiences that people give meaning to their life-worlds, learn to handle their emotions, and find access to world politics. Particularly art and popular culture have a (re)generative power in this respect by nourishing thought and sustaining hope. Freed from methodological obstructions, emotions allow people to think about world politics in a more intensive, differentiated, and subtle way. This aspect of his research also enables Felix to further pursue his pedagogic interests.

You can find his work on researchgate | academia.edu

External activities

Felix served as a convenor of the International Relations as a Social Science working group of the British International Studies Association (BISA) and acted as an external examiner at Aberystwyth University. In 2017, he helped to organise the World International Studies Committee (WISC) Conference in Taipei. He has given many guest lectures and talks, amongst others at the University of Tokyo, ICU Tokyo, Hosei University, University of St. Andrews, City University London, Aberystwyth University, the University of St. Gallen, and for the Summer Academy of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes in Cambridge.

Felix co-edits two book series:

Global Political Thinkers

Trends in European IR Theory 

Publications and press

Monographs 

• Reappraising European IR Theoretical Traditions. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 (series: Trends in European IR Theory; with Audrey Alejandro, Knud Erik Jørgensen, Alexander Reichwein, and Helen Turton)
• Power, Knowledge, and Dissent in Morgenthau’s Worldview. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 (series: Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought)

Edited Volumes  

• Realism: A Distinctively 20th Century European Tradition. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021 (series: Trends in European IR Theory; with Alexander Reichwein)
• Modern Japanese Political Thought and International Relations. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021 (series: Global Dialogues: Non Eurocentric Visions of the Global; with Atsuko Watanabe)
• Émigré Scholars and the Genesis of International Relations. A European Discipline in America?. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 (series: Palgrave Studies in International Relations)
• Hans J. Morgenthau, The Concept of the Political, edited with an introduction by Hartmut Behr and Felix Rösch. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012 (series: Palgrave Studies in International Relations).

Journal Articles (selection) 

• Practising International Thought as a Critique of Populism. Realist Accounts for a Democratic Political. Austrian Journal of Political Science, 2022 (with John Grima)
• Un(COIL)ing the Pandemic: Active and Affective Learning in Times of Covid-19. PS: Political Science & Politics 55, 1 (2022): 188-192 (with Violeta Cotoman, Annabel Davies, Nanako Kawagoe, Hana Niihashi, Aisha Rahman, Yuki Tomita, and Atsuko Watanabe)
• Affect, Practice, and Change: Dancing World Politics at the Congress of Vienna. Cooperation and Conflict 56, 2 (2021): 123-140  
• Policing Intellectual Boundaries? Émigré Scholars, the Council on Foreign Relations Study Group on International Theory, and American International Relations in the 1950s. International History Review 42, 3 (2020): 607-624 
• The Power of Dance: Teaching International Relations through Contact Improvisation. International Studies Perspectives 19, 1 (2018): 67-82 
• The Inter as Liminal Spaces: Prudence, Transience, and Affection. International Studies Review 19, 2 (2017): 287-291  
• Approaching the Unsynthesizable in International Politics: Giving Substance to Security Discourses through Basso Ostinato?. European Journal of International Relations 23, 3 (2017): 609-629 (with Atsuko Watanabe)
• Unlearning Modernity. A Realist Method for Critical International Relations?. Journal of International Political Theory 13, 1 (2017): 81-99  
• Crisis, Values, and the Purpose of Science: Morgenthau in Europe. Ethics & International Affairs 30, 1 (2016): 1-9 
• “Hooray! Hooray! The end of the world has been postponed!” Politics of Peace in The Adventures of Tintin?. Politics 34, 3 (2014): 225-236 
  Pouvoir, Puissance, and Politics: Hans Morgenthau’s Dualistic Concept of Power?. Review of International Studies 40, 2 (2014): 349-365 
• Entpolitisierung in der Moderne. Zur Zentralität des Begriffs des Politischen im Denken Hans J. Morgenthaus. Zeitschrift für Politik 60, 4 (2013): 430-451
• Realism as Social Criticism: The Thinking Partnership of Hannah Arendt and Hans Morgenthau. International Politics 50, 6 (2013): 815-829 
• The Human Condition of Politics: considering the Legacy of Hans J. Morgenthau for International Relations. Journal of International Political Theory 9, 1 (2013): 1-21

Book Chapters (selection)

• Agency and Context, in: Hartmut Behr and Russell Foster, eds., Studying International Relations. A Companion Guide. Montreal: McGill University Press, 2023
• Weimar in America: Central European Émigrés, Classical Realism, or How to Prevent History from Repeating Itself, in: Alexander Reichwein and Felix Rösch, eds., Realism: A Distinctively 20th Century European Tradition. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, pp. 45-62 (with Luca G. Castellin).
• The Silent Presence: Germany in American Postwar International Relations, in: Jens Steffek and Leonie Holthaus, eds., Changing Images of Germany in International Relations: Prussians, Nazis, Peaceniks. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020, pp. 145-166
• Pedagogies of Discomfort: Teaching International Relations as Humanitas in Times of Brexit, in: Jamie Frueh, ed., Pedagogical Journeys Through World Politics: Adventures in Teaching. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 103-113
• Hans J. Morgenthau, in: Robert Schuett and Miles Hollingworth, eds., Edinburgh Companion to Political Realism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018, pp. 342-354
• Realism, Tragedy, Power, and the Refugee Crisis, in: Davide Orsi, J.R. Avgustin, and Max Nurnus, eds., Realism in Practice. An Appraisal. Bristol: E-International Relations, 2018, pp. 6-15 (with Richard Ned Lebow)
• Morgenthau in Europe: Searching for the Political, in: Cornelia Navari, ed., Hans J. Morgenthau and the American Experience. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 1-25
• The Ethics of Anti-Hubris in the Political Philosophy of International Relations: Hans J. Morgenthau, in: Jodok Troy, ed., Religion and the Realist Tradition. From Political Theology to International Relations Theory and Back. London: Routledge, 2013, pp. 111-128 (with Hartmut Behr)
• Comparing ‘Systems’ and ‘Cultures’: Between Universalities, Imperialism, and Indigenousity, in: Hans-Joachim Lauth, ed., Vergleichende Regierungslehre. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 2010, pp. 73-91 (with Hartmut Behr)