Faculty

Profile

Rafi Youatt is Associate Professor of Politics at NSSR. His research and teaching are in critical international relations; planetary politics; mobility and borderlands; and interpretive research methods. He is the author of Interspecies Politics: Nature, States, Borders (University of Michigan Press, 2020) and Counting Species: Biodiversity in Global Environmental Politics (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). His research has also been published widely in peer-reviewed journals, including Review of International Studies, Millennium Journal of International Studies, International Political Sociology, Environmental Values, and Political Research Quarterly. His current book project, In the Shadow of Giants, studies how imperial and post-imperial political orders are grounded and ungrounded in a trio of borderlands.  

He has served as associate editor of the Journal of International Relations and Development, and co-convenes the Global Politics Workshop at NSSR. He has previously served as Director of Graduate Studies in Politics, and chair of Environmental Studies undergraduate program. He is currently Chair of the Politics Department.  

Degrees Held

PhD 2007, University of Chicago, Political Science

MA 2001, University of Chicago, Committee on International Relations

BA 1997, University of California, Berkeley, Political Science

Recent Publications

BOOKS

Interspecies Politics: Nature, States, Borders (University of Michigan Press, 2020).

Counting Species: Biodiversity in Global Environmental Politics. University of Minnesota Press, (2015).

SELECTED ARTICLES and CHAPTERS

'Anthropocentrism and Democracy in Planetary Times,' Public Seminar (2023), also reprinted in Eurozine.

'Walking the International.' International Politcal Sociology. (2022).

'The Moving Walkway is Ending: A Speculative Essay on Climate-Driven Species Mobility and Planetary Politics.' Borderlands (2022).

'Intersecting Mobilities: Between the Autonomy of Movement and the Power of Place' (with Miriam Ticktin). Borderlands, (2022), introduction to special issue.

'Interspecies Politics and the Global Rat: Ecology, Extermination, Experiment.' Review of International Studies. (2022)

'Ecologies of Globalization: Mountain Governance and Multinatural Planetary Politics.' in J. Pereira and A Saramago, eds. Nonhuman Nature and World Politics: Theory and Practice. (2020) 

'Anthropocentrism and the Politics of the Living' in Eroukhmanoff, C. and M. Harker, eds. Reflections on the Posthuman in International Relations: The Anthropocene, Security, and Ecology. (2017)

'Images Unwalled: Walls of Water' with Multiple Mobilities Research Cluster. Anthropology Now. (2017) 

‘Personhood and the Rights of Nature: The New Subjects of Contemporary Earth Politics’, International Political Sociology. (2017)

‘Sovereignty and the Wolves of Isle Royale.’ In Political Theory and the Animal-Human Relationship. Grant, J. and V. Jungkunz, eds. (SUNY Press, April 2016).

‘Interspecies.’ Entry for Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory. Gabrielson, T., Hall, C., Meyer, J., and Schlosberg, D., eds. (Oxford University Press, 2016).

‘Interspecies Relations, International Relations: Rethinking Anthropocentric Politics.’ Millennium Journal of International Studies. 43(1) (2014), pp. 207-223.

‘Pain, Power, and the Interspecies Politics of Foie Gras.’ Political Research Quarterly. 65(2), (2012), pp. 346-358.

‘Counting Species: Biopower and the Global Biodiversity Census.’ Environmental Values. (2008). 17(3), pp. 393-417.