Power, capital and contestation:towards a critical pedagogy for international relations and political science

This dissertation examines the simultaneous marginalization and transformative potential of pedagogy in International Relations (IR) and Political Science (PS). In an academic landscape shaped by neoliberal reforms that prioritize research outputs, teaching is often undervalued and institutionally sidelined. Yet, pedagogy remains a politically charged site where students are formed not only as knowledge consumers, but as critically minded citizens and researchers. The thesis argues that how, why, and by whom teaching is practiced and valorized matters deeply for the reproduction and contestation of disciplinary norms. Through three interlinked studies—a bibliometric analysis of the disciplinary scholarship about the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in IR/PS, a qualitative interview study of cutting-edge pedagogical practices, and a Bourdieusian analysis of how power and capital operate in SoTL—the dissertation exposes how teaching is both structured by and resistant to broader academic hierarchies. It identifies epistemic inequities, symbolic exclusions, and tensions between grassroots innovation and institutional recognition. Drawing on critical pedagogy and decolonial theory, it frames classroom encounters as sites of co-production, political engagement, and struggle over whose knowledge counts. Ultimately, the dissertation calls for revaluing pedagogy as a core scholarly activity in IR/PS—rigorous, reflexive, and central to the intellectual and civic missions of the discipline and higher education more broadly.