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Jana Wattenberg

Aberystwyth University, UK (CAT Program)
Theories of Change and Nuclear Disarmament
14 October 2024 - 18 October 2024
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Jana Wattenberg is a post-doctoral fellow at Aberystwyth University/American University (Washington DC) (Horizon Europe Guarantee Scheme for Marie Sklodowska Curie Global Fellowship). She is also a Lecturer in Security at Aberystwyth University and a Senior Fellow with Women in International Security (WIIS).
 

She joins the Paris IAS in October 2024 for a group research stay as part of the CAT collaborative program, working with researchers Lyndon Burford, Kjølv Egeland, Heba Taha, and Tom Vaughan.

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Research Interests

Nuclear weapons, nuclear disarmament, feminism, ideas in world politics

Theories of Change and Nuclear Disarmament
(Collaborative project, awarded a NetIAS Constructive Advanced Thinking grant, 2021-2024)

Theories of Change and Nuclear Disarmament (TCND) seeks to initiate interdisciplinary conversations between researchers on the question of nuclear disarmament and how it might be achieved. Scholarly conceptions of 'change' as a concept are relatively limited within the fields of international relations (IR) and security studies, with mainstream theories often reproducing an implicit methodological 'continuationism' which discounts the possibility of meaningful change of, or within, the international system. Nuclear weapons are therefore too often accepted as an inevitable presence in world politics. TCND engages researchers from diverse disciplines on the concept of 'change’ and asks whether accounts of change processes from outside of IR might allow us to think about nuclear disarmament in a new light. Questions include: how much must change—is nuclear disarmament possible only in the context of much wider, sweeping changes in world socio-economic order, or can it be achieved through smaller, targeted interventions? Would the advent of a more just and peaceful world guarantee nuclear disarmament, or would nuclear weapons somehow remain? How can lower-order social changes be leveraged to feed into this process? How can interdisciplinarity contribute to answering these questions?

Key Publications

"More women, fewer nukes?" International Studies Review, forthcoming

32541
2024-2025