In 2011 Simon Polinder was a participant in the UCSIA Summer School. That year’s focus was religion and international relations. He presented his research paper ‘Interaction in a Globalising World’.
Last week, Simon won the E-International Relations Article Award with the article ‘Through the Eyes of Love’: Looking at International Politics Differently. Many students and diplomats are trained to analyze, understand and approach the world of international politics through the lens of fear. But what if we view it through the perspective of love?
In July, he also published a new book Towards A New Christian Political Realism (Routledge). It presents a new theoretical approach to understanding the role of religion in international relations, considering the strengths of Christian realism, classical realism, and neorealism, as well as the literature about the relevance of religion for IR.
Simon Polinder is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of History of International Relations at Utrecht University. He is associated with the project Reimagining Religion, Security, and Social Transformation. This project is part of the broader knowledge agenda of the Joint Initiative for Strategic Religious Action (JISRA) programme.