Dr Irene Fernandez-Molina

I am a senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Exeter, which I joined in 2015. My research deals with the international relations of the Global South, subalternity and southern agency, foreign policies of dependent and/or authoritarian states, conflicts (frozen conflicts, contested/unrecognised states) and constructivist IR theory (international socialisation, recognition, practices), with a regional focus on North Africa, as well as EU foreign policy and Euro-Mediterranean relations.

I am the current Director of Education and Student Experience (DESE) for Politics and International Relations in Exeter's Department of Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology (SPSPA). I have convened the MA Politics and International Relations of the Middle East, and have also acted as the Department of Politics' Director of Undergraduate Studies at Exeter. I am a fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, and have taught as a visiting professor at the College of Europe, Bruges campus.

I was previously a lecturer in Middle East Politics and lecturer in International Relations at Exeter, a research fellow at the European Neighbourhood Policy Chair of the College of Europe, Natolin campus (Warsaw), a Schuman fellow at the Directorate-General for External Policies of the European Parliament (Brussels) and a PhD research fellow at the Complutense University of Madrid. I obtained my PhD in Political Science/International Relations with a thesis on Moroccan foreign policy which led me to conduct fieldwork and stay as a visiting scholar at various centres in Morocco (Centre Jacques Berque, Institut Marocain des Relations Internationales-IMRI) and France (Institut de Recherche sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman-IREMAM).

The projects I have been working on lately deal with the international and transnational politics of recognition in civil wars (Libya, funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant for 2019-2020) and frozen conflicts (Western Sahara), the diplomatic practices of contested/unrecognised states, the political economy-foreign policy link in contexts of neoliberal subalternity and the migration-foreign policy nexus in migration transit countries in the European neighbourhood.

Read more on my Academia.edu (until 2019), Google Scholar and Bluesky profiles.