Professor Laura Sjoberg

I am a Fellow in Politics and International Relations at Exeter College and a Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. I grew up in the United States, attending the University of Chicago as an undergraduate (BA Hons 2001, Political Science and History), studying for my PhD at the University of Southern California (PhD 2004, International Relations, under the supervision of J. Ann Tickner), and obtaining a Juris Doctorate at Boston College (cum laude, 2007). After working at a number of Universities in the US (Harvard, 2005-2006; Duke 2006-2007; Virginia Tech 2007-2009; the University of Florida 2009-2022), I moved to the UK to take up a British Academy Global Professorship at Royal Holloway, University of London (2020-2024). I am very much enjoying life in the UK – I have met some great colleagues at Royal Holloway and look forward to working with many more at Oxford.

Research

My main streams of research intersect armed conflict and gender studies, and my career goals are and always have been in mainstreaming gender in International Relations research specifically, and political science research more generally. My academic career began, and remains interested and engaged in, doing this work at the intersection of feminist theory and ethics in the theory and practice of war and conflict. My work on just war theorizing has always been a representative element of my interest in gender and security in global politics more generally. I have explored gender and security more generally by looking to establish and analyse a research program in Feminist Security Studies (FSS), which theorizes international security generally and war specifically through gender lenses.

My interest in gender and international security generally led, early in my career, to a research interest in women’s political violence. I realized that many people – feminists and traditional scholars alike – simply assumed women’s incapacity to commit political violence. Feminist theorists seemed (if incidentally) to hold women equal to men but without their flaws, while traditional scholars assumed that the security sector was not a place that women would be found. Caron Gentry and I starting working together in this area, looking to bring attention to both the existence of politically violent women and to the gendered treatment of those women in legal, media, scholarly, and political contexts. We both continue to work on these questions, and I am currently working on a textbook incorporating this research.

My desire to make feminist and queer theorizing more visible in the field has combined with my interest in political methodology to develop another facet of my research program – writing about epistemology, methodology, and method in IR research. Particularly, I am interested (frequently writing with J. Samuel Barkin on these issues) in critiquing the quantitative/qualitative divide in IR scholarship, arguing against theoretical conflation in the field, and looking to alter the role of methods choices in the disciplinary sociology of IR.

Teaching

I am still finding my places teaching at Oxford. Some of my teaching strengths are international relations theory, international security, feminist and queer international relations, international law, methods and epistemology, and international political theory.

Selected Publications

Books

• Sjoberg, Laura and Jessica Peet. 2019. Gender and Civilian Victimization in War. London: Routledge.
• Barkin, J. Samuel and Laura Sjoberg. 2019. International Relations’ Last Synthesis: Decoupling Constructivist and Critical Approaches. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Sjoberg, Laura. 2016. Women as Wartime Rapists: Beyond Sensation and Stereotyping. New York: New York University Press.
• Sjoberg, Laura. 2013. Gendering Global Conflict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War. New York: Columbia University Press.

Winner, 2016 J. Ann Tickner book prize

• Sjoberg, Laura and Caron Gentry. 2007. Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics. London: Zed Books.

Edited Volumes

• Gentry, Caron; Laura Shepherd; and Laura Sjoberg, eds. 2018. Handbook on Gender and Security. London: Routledge.
• Barkin, J. Samuel and Laura Sjoberg, eds. 2017. Interpretive Quantification. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Tickner, J. Ann and Laura Sjoberg, eds. 2011. Feminism and International Relations: Conversations about the Past, Present, and Future. London and New York: Routledge.
• Sjoberg, Laura and Sandra Via, eds. 2010. Gender, War, and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International.

Special Issues

• Sjoberg, Laura, ed. “Faking It in 21^st Century IR/Global Politics,” Forum in Millennium: Journal of International Politics 45(1) (2016): 80-130.
• Sjoberg, Laura and Caron Gentry, eds. “Everyday Violence, Gender, and Terrorism,” special section of Critical Studies on Terrorism 8(3) (2015): 358-455.
• Sjoberg, Laura and Cynthia Weber, eds. “Queer International Relations,” Forum in International Studies Review, 16(4), December 2014: 596-622.
• Sjoberg, Laura, ed. “Security Studies: Feminist Contributions,” Edited Special Issue of the Journal Security Studies, 18(2), July 2009, 183-369.

Journal Articles

• Sjoberg, Laura. 2024. “Violences in/of Critical Terrorism Studies.” Critical Studies on Terrorism. https://doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2024.2384148.
• Barkin, J. Samuel and Laura Sjoberg. 2021. “The Queer Art of Failed IR?” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 45(4): 167-183.
• Kinsella, Helen and Laura Sjoberg. 2018. “Family Values? Sexism and Heteronormativity in Feminist Evolutionary Analytic (FEA) Research,” Review of International Studies 45(2): 260-279.
• Sjoberg, Laura. 2015. “The Terror of Everyday Counterterrorism,” Critical Studies on Terrorism 8(3): 383-400.

Runner-up for Critical Studies on Terrorism Best Article Prize, 2016

• Shepherd, Laura and Laura Sjoberg. 2012. “Trans- Bodies in/of Wars: Cis-privilege and Contemporary Security Strategies,” Feminist Review, 101: 5-23.
• Sjoberg, Laura. 2012. “Gender, Structure, and War: What Waltz Couldn’t See,” International Theory 4(1): 1-38.
• Sjoberg, Laura and Jessica Peet. 2011. “A(nother) Dark Side of the Protection Racket: Targeting Women in Wars,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 13(2): 163-82.
• Sjoberg, Laura. 2011. “Gender, the State, and War Redux: Feminist International Relations Across the ‘Levels of Analysis’,” International Relations 25(1): 108-134.
• Sjoberg, Laura. 2010. “Women Fighters and the ‘Beautiful Soul’ Narrative,” International Review of the Red Cross 92(877): 53-68.
• Sjoberg, Laura. 2009. “Security Studies: Feminist Contributions,” Security Studies 18(2): 183-213.
• Sjoberg, Laura. 2007. “Agency, Militarized Femininity, and Enemy Others,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 9(1): 82-101.
• Sjoberg, Laura. 2006. “The Gendered Realities of the Immunity Principle: Why Gender Analysis Needs Feminism,” International Studies Quarterly 50(4): 889-910.