Interested in Threats: Exploring How Emotional Interest Shapes Security Studies Scholarship

Abstract Security studies scholars are, by definition, interested in threats. But how does interest shape their knowledge production? We draw on contemporary psychological literature to theorize interest as an emotion and use abductive logic combined with illustrative examples to show how such theorization relates to knowledge-generating dynamics in security studies scholarship. Emotional interest explains how real-world affairs (fail to) become subjects of scholarly inquiry, why scholars persist in studying specific subjects despite the changes in real-world affairs and how that study changes them, and how prior scholarly interests influence subsequent development of other interests. Our findings address a theoretical gap in the existing security studies scholarship and present opportunities for enhancing personal and collective research and teaching practices.