The E.H. Carr Memorial Lecture 2009-2010 ‘Why Nations Fight? Past and Future Motives for War’

Professor Richard Ned Lebow

The Department of International Politics is delighted to announce that the Carr Lecture for this academic year will be given by Richard Ned Lebow on Thursday 25 February at 7.00pm.  This is a public lecture. 

Professor Lebow is one of the most distinguished academics in the United States.  He has a long, wide-ranging, and influential series of publications on nuclear strategy, crises, the psychological dimensions of international conflict, methods, and international history.  In recent years, his work has focused on the theoretical dimensions of International Relations.

His most recent books are The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders (Cambridge University Press, 2003), winner of the Alexander L. George Award for the best book in political psychology, and A Cultural Theory of International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2008), winner of the Jervis-Schoeder Award for the best book in international relations and history and the Susan Strange Award for the best book of the year.  His Forbidden Fruit: Counterfactuals and International Relations has just appeared with Princeton University Press.

Professor Lebow is presently the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and Centennial Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

The lecture will be held in the Old Hall, Old College, at 7.00pm, and all are welcome to what promises to be a most stimulating intellectual event.

EH Carr Memorial Lectures – Background

The Woodrow Wilson Chair of International Politics was established at Aberyswyth in 1919 and is the oldest chair in the subject. E. H. Carr, the fourth holder of the Chair, was probably its most distinguished occupant.

During his years at Aberystwyth (1936-1947), Carr wrote The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations, which is generally regarded as one of the seminal works in the discipline. He was later best known in the wider world of scholarship for his multi-volume work, A History of Soviet Russia and his best-selling What is History? Carr died in 1982 at the age of 90.

The Department has been holding an annual lecture in his memory since 1984. The E.H. Carr Memorial Lecture is delivered to a public audience on a subject chosen by the speaker in the general field of international politics.

The lecture series was originally funded solely by royalties from books which resulted from conferences sponsored by the Department over some 20 years at Gregynog Hall, the University of Wales conference centre near Newtown, Powys.  Gregynog was the home of David Davies, who endowed the Wilson Chair.  The lecture series is now in part funded by Sage, the publishers of International Relations, the journal of the David Davies Memorial Institute.

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