Audrey Alejandro

The London School of Economics and Political Science | LSE · Department of Methodology

Preface Theorizing is among the most important activities that take place within scientific disciplines, and theories make one of the constituent parts of a discipline. Scholars therefore routinely talk about the discipline of IR and its theories, and because scholars cherish theoretical knowledge, they prime students with the contents of IR 101 sy...

Since the 1980s, International Relations (IR) scholars have emphasised the ‘geoepistemological’ dynamics underpinning the global structuration of discipline diversity. By focusing mainly on the study of ‘American’ and ‘non-Western’ IR, this debate has given little attention to the voices, perspectives, and practices of those scholars who study IR i...

Since the 1970s, a ‘critical’ movement has been developing in the humanities and social sciences denouncing the existence of ‘Western dominance’ over the worldwide production and circulation of knowledge. However, thirty years after the emergence of this promising agenda in International Relations (IR), this discipline has not experienced a major s...

Full text available at: https://www.audreyalejandro.com/blog---the-methodological-artist/category/analysis

How to implement reflexivity in practice? Can the knowledge we produce be emancipatory when our discourses recursively originate in the world we aim to challenge? Critical International Relations (IR) scholars have successfully put reflexivity on the agenda based on the theoretical premise that discourse and knowledge play a socio-political role. H...

International organizations (IOs) are the setting for the production and dis- semination of overlapping discourses. They annually publish thousands of documents in which one word can be debated over years of negotiations. Discourse analysis assists scholars to grasp both internal processes of dis- course production within organizations and the impa...

The growing interest in combining different approaches to qualitative text and discourse analysis has so far not been met with adapted methodological resources. This article aims to address this gap by developing a methodological framework for combining qualitative text and discourse analysis. First, we introduce four traditions that we identify as...

Altmetrics are an emerging form of bibliometric measurement that capture the online dimension of scholarly exchange. Against the backdrop of both a higher education landscape increasingly focused on quantifying research productivity and impact, as well as literature emphasising the need to address gender bias in the discipline, we consider whether...

Video tutorial recorded for Sage Research Methods Video: Qualitative and Mixed Methods: https://methods.sagepub.com/video/srmpromo/CkCNAi/reflexivity-in-practice-an-introduction

Case study video recorded for Sage Research Methods Video: Qualitative and Mixed Methods: https://methods.sagepub.com/video/reflexivity-in-practice-the-internationalisation-of-social-sciences

Open access: https://www.audreyalejandro.com/blog---the-methodological-artist/poems-of-resistance-writing-poetry-about-frustrations-hope-and-standing-up-against-the-system

Chinese translation of the blog post: "What is analysis? Some tips to "become more analytical" In Chinese: https://www.audreyalejandro.com/blog---the-methodological-artist/5275681 In English: In https://www.audreyalejandro.com/blog---the-methodological-artist/what-is-analysis-some-tips-to-become-more-analytical In Spanish: https://www.audreyalejan...

Open access: https://www.audreyalejandro.com/blog---the-methodological-artist/checklist-questionnaire-when-revising-a-research-assignmentproject

Despite the imperative to pay attention to the words we use as a routine dimension of research, the methodological and pedagogical tools illustrating how to work on our own use of language are largely missing within and beyond international relations (IR). To address this gap, we develop a method—the “Reflexive Review”—which adds a linguistic and r...

Following qualitative researchers’ growing interest in reflexivity, a body of scholarship has emerged that aims to turn informal practices for reflexivity into methods that can be learnt and taught alongside other research practices. This literature, however, has focused on helping researchers become more reflexive toward their situatedness and pos...

How can we explain Central and Eastern Europe's (CEE) relative absence in the 'worlding International Relations'(IR) conversation? What does provincializing the discipline from CEE might look like? I argue that CEE has been relatively neglected in the 'worlding IR' literature 1) due to local factors, 2) because it might have been turned into an 'un...

"Discourses of diversity are all too often used to justify both the hubris of thinking that we know all that there is to know, and the violence we create when this way of thinking is hidden within well-meaning yet often hurtful moves to embrace difference." Article fully available online here: https://rdcu.be/colKT

Whether you are a teacher teaching qualitative research methods or a student learning methodology, this blog post aims to help you answer the questions people learning how to code qualitative data always ask. Full text available: https://www.audreyalejandro.com/blog---the-methodological-artist/coding-qualitative-data-am-doing-it-the-right-way

Full text available at: https://www.audreyalejandro.com/blog---the-methodological-artist/category/online-teaching

The visibility of non-Western theories, concepts, and ideas has increased in the field of International Relations (IR) in the last decade due to the postcolonial critiques of the Eurocentrism of IR and the ongoing calls for diversity. As a result, IR has been enriched with new concepts and theories from across the world. This workshop builds upon t...

Full text available at: https://info.lse.ac.uk/staff/divisions/Eden-Centre/Resources-to-support-your-practice/Education-Case-Studies/Methodology-Developing-post-graduate-research-skills

What is the relationship between ‘the national’ and ‘the international’ in regards to the internationalisation and diversification of IR ? The fourth chapter deconstructs the implicit relationship between the commonly used categories of thought: ‘the national’ and ‘the international’. It offers a decentred account of IR in Brazil and India to show...

What are the social effects of the narrative of Western dominance’s anti-Eurocentric Eurocentric discourse on the field of IR? The first four chapters demonstrate that the narrative of Western dominance is Eurocentric according to the three dimensions of Eurocentrism identified in the Introduction. Chapter 5 exposes how the narrative of Western do...

What are the conditions determining the internationalisation of IR publications ? The third chapter investigates the factors determining the internationalisation of IR research in Brazil and India. Thus, it questions the fact that the internationalisation of IR from ‘the Global South’ is prevented by ‘Western’ scholars. Contrary to the assumptions...

How did critical scholars exclude themselves from their object of inquiry, and what did I do to include myself back into the analysis? Chapter 6 offers a reflexive account of three of the endeavours I undertook to produce an alternative discourse to the narrative of Western dominance. I argue that the core reason explaining the recursive paradox i...

Do Indian and Brazilian IR scholars aim to publish in foreign IR journals? The second chapter assesses the position of Indian and Brazilian scholars regarding the internationalisation of their publications. Thus, it questions the implicit consensus that ‘scholars from the Global South’ naturally aspire to publish abroad. First, it investigates the...

Is IR as diverse as the critical literature assumes it to be, and do such differences represent comparative disadvantages for the internationalisation of publications? The first chapter questions the way ‘difference’ and ‘local specificities’ are addressed by the critical literature. It challenges the assumption that ‘scholars from the Global Sout...

The narrative of Western dominance describes IR as a field organised around national traditions. It denounces the existence of Eurocentric international gatekeeping practices that silence the voices of ‘scholars from the Global South’ and prevent the internationalisation of their publications. Such gate-keeping practices would prevent scholars from...

In this chapter, we provide a conceptualization of Europe, aiming to contribute to ambitions of mapping the pluralistic universalism of international political thought globally. To this end, we study European intellectual traditions not with the intention to create an enclosed space which separates itself from other spaces, but our understanding of...

In this chapter, we argue what we understand as tradition. Traditions have historical roots and origins. As a theoretical tradition is nothing without theorists to constitute, reproduce and change it, we also focus on the contributions of individual theorists. And traditions, like history, are characterized by both continuities and discontinuities...

In this chapter, we spell out what we mean by reconstruction. The purpose of reconstructing the theoretical traditions including their main characteristics, origins and trajectories as they have evolved in Europe in the twentieth century is threefold: providing concise accounts of broad lines of development and major changes and continuities over t...

This chapter explores how reflexivity represents a promising tool to improve the global circulation of IR. Taking as a starting point the literature highlighting scholars’ responsibility regarding the social and political effects of their discourses, it shows how making explicit the socio-historical conditions of academic productions contributes to...

This chapter examines the debates about IR’s disciplinary status. It argues that despite the numerous critiques, IR is a discipline and operates as such in numerous different parts of the globe. In doing so, this chapter explores the different definitions of what it means to be a discipline and argues that based on a structural and sociological acc...

This chapter positions the book series in the context of the growing concerns of the lack of diversity in IR. Since the 1980s, scholars have been addressing this challenge by mapping “Global IR” and promoting pluralism in the discipline. In comparison with “scholars from the Global South”, European IR scholars still have to properly engage with the...

This chapter asks the question “what does it mean to be hegemonic” in the discipline of IR? It argues that there are two common modes of being hegemonic; an IR community exercises its hegemonic position institutionally and/or intellectually. Exploring the different ways in which an IR community can be hegemonic, this chapter makes the claim that th...

in Hellmann, Gunther and ValbjØrn, Morten. (2017) Problematizing Global Challenges: Recalibrating the “Inter” in IR-Theory. International Studies Review, doi: 10.1093/isr/vix009

This book is about European IR theoretical traditions, their origins, and key figures. Theorizing is among the most important activities that take place within scientific disciplines. Scholars therefore routinely talk/debate about the discipline of IR and its theories, theories are often used to form the pedagogical backbone of IR and theories are...

A more advanced version of the argument defended in this paper is presented in my book Western Dominance in International Relations? The internationalisation of IR in Brazil and India (chapter 2 and pp. 115-118).

Full text available at http://www.e-ir.info/2016/09/17/walking-the-reflexive-talk/

Many Chinese economic actors in Africa have come under harsh criticism for the alleged environmental impact of their activities. This impact is not always documented, is uneven across the continent, and should be compared to that of business actors from other countries—in particular from the OECD. One major factor accounts for the recorded differen...