ISRU organizes different types of events often in collaboration with our affiliated centers. All staff and postgraduate students, as well as interested undergraduates, are invited to attend.

The “Work in Progress” (WIP) seminar series is our flagship event taking place bi-weekly. The format has the primary purpose of discussing work in progress products, including draft articles, draft book chapters and grant applications which are close to submission or in revise and resubmit. The WIP seminars are coordinated by Dr. Anne Harrington, please contact her for further information.

The “Frontiers in International Theory” speaker series invites high-profile scholars of international standing to reflect on contemporary problems of international theory and to present their current work in progress. Events are usually annually or bi-annually. Speakers in recent years included Prof. Spike Peterson (Arizona), Prof. Ned Lebow (London) and Prof. Lene Hansen (Copenhagen).

The “Inside …” speaker series invites practitioners of international politics to reflect on their everyday practices and to discuss contemporary problematic issues with the units’ scholars. The Inside series aims at increasing the dialogue and knowledge exchange with practitioners and to give students first-hand insights about different workplaces in the field of international policy. Events are usually annually or bi-annually. Past speakers include representatives from NATO and the International Maritime Organization, the European External Action Service, ambassadors to the UK from the USA, Russia, or Lithuania. Practitioners that gave lectures include Bertram Ramcharan, former United Nations Acting Commissioner for Human Rights, Lord David Hannay, former UK Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN, Hartmut Hesse, Former Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Maritime Security of the International Maritime Organization, and Commander Stein Olav Hagalid, Head of the NATO Shipping Center.

Workshops and other events are organized ad-hoc and are usually linked to research projects of our members. In 2014 we organized a high-profile conference on the future of NATO linked to the NATO Wales Summit in September 2014. In 2017 we will host the European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS) of the European International Studies Association. Other recent workshops have focussed on criticality, the relation between history and theory, international practice theory, maritime security, and diplomacy.

Speakers coming to Cardiff since 2014 included, among others, Stephen Krasner (Stanford), Friedrich Kratochwil (EUI), Jef Huysmans (Open University), Kyle Grayson (Newcastle University), Douglas Guilfoyle (UCL), Chris Brown (LSE), Anna Leander (Copenhagen Business School), Antje Wiener (University of Hamburg), Inanna Hamati-Ataya (Aberystwyth), Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen (Copenhagen), Vivienne Jabri (King’s College London), Louiza Odysseos (University of Sussex), Robbie Shilliam (QMUL), Carl Death (University of Manchester), Stephen Legg (University of Nottingham), Vincent Pouliot (McGill), Rebecca Adler-Nissen (Copenhagen University), Stephen Bernstein (University of Toronto), William Walters (Carleton University), Ted Hopf (National University of Singapore).