Author profile: Patrick Thaddeus Jackson

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson is Professor of International Studies in the School of International Service. Currently Chair of the Department of Global Inquiry, he has previously been Director of AU Honors, Associate Dean of SIS, and the university’s Director of General Education. He previously taught at Columbia University and New York University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University in 2001. In 2003-4, he served as President of the International Studies Association-Northeast; in 2012-2013, he did so again. He was formerly Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Relations and Development, and is currently Series Editor of the University of Michigan Press’ book series Configurations: Critical Studies of World Politics. He was named the 2012 U.S. Professor of the Year for the District of Columbia by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Jackson’s research interests include culture and agency, international relations theory (particularly the intersection of realism and constructivism), scientific methodology, the role of rhetoric in public life, civilizations in world politics, the sociology of academic knowledge, popular culture and IR, and the formation of subjectivity both in the classroom and in the broader social sphere. Jackson’s latest book is Facts and Explanations in International Studies…and beyond (Routledge, 2025).

Review – Causal Inquiry in International Relations

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson • Sep 1 2025 • Features

Humphreys and Suganami offer a rich, thoughtful critique of causal inquiry in IR, though their approach may underplay how abstract theories shape concrete explanations.

Fear of Relativism

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson • Jul 3 2012 • Articles

Two claims inhabiting different traditions of inquiry cannot possibly contradict one another unless they can be translated into the other tradition and straightforwardly evaluated.

What the Philosophy of Science is Not Good For

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson • Feb 23 2009 • Articles

The field of IR has been concerned about its scientific status for decades. This concern has led to a number of efforts to make the field “truly scientific” by adopting one or another philosophical and methodological stance: behaviorism in the 1950s, neopositivism in the 1970s and 1980s, and critical realism in the 1990s.

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