Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Development, School of Political Science and International Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Queensland, Australia

18 June until 15 September 2018

In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Gunther Hellmann

Funded by Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University Frankfurt in cooperation with Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften

Heloise Weber’s main research interests are in the Global Politics of Development/Critical Development Studies, Global/International Political Economy (GPE/IPE), and Critical Approaches to International Relations (IR), all grounded in an interest in politics of deprivation and discrimination. To these she brings a keen interest in the political histories and relations of colonialism, the politics of representation, decolonizing thought, and questions of regulation, power and resistance. These interests have informed her theoretical and methodological outlooks, and led her to engage with the politics of comparative method(s), meta-theoretical questions around relational analysis, and historical legacies in contemporary contradictions of development. Her publications have covered social and political analyses of development and poverty reduction strategies and their implications, critical evaluations of global governance frameworks, engagements with Human Security as an approach to development, and theoretical as well as methodological issues in IR/IPE and the Global Politics of Development.

Research project title:
Human Rights and Global Development

Research abstract:
In line with my research interests in the politics of global development and inequalities (understood as a historically constituted global project/ world politics), I have over the past couple of years been developing a research project on Human Rights (HR) and Global  Development. My preliminary research findings suggest that there are some quite significant tensions in the emerging HR and Global Development framework. This is most evident with regard to the privileging of rights that align with global commercial and investment (including free trade) law as justiciable rights. Increasingly trade law (lex mercatoria) is aligned with development law. The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs] agenda is the most recent high-level international development framework also adopted as a United Nations Resolution. This particular alignment of HR and Global Development could potentially result in further conflict as life sustaining needs such as water, food, shelter (to name a few) are no longer conceived as universal entitlements. Instead, their realisation is now tethered to the question of ‘trade law’, which is increasingly the domain of justiciable rights. For instance, this concerns the protection of new forms of investment law as property law as provided for under the General Agreement of Trade in Services of the World Trade Organisation [WTO]. This emerging global framing of HR and Global Development occurs arguably at a historically unique conjuncture and one that has also been subject to crucial challenges, ethically, socially and politically (see, for instance, the recent rise of social movement politics).

Furthermore Dr. Heloise Weber is working on the Collaborative Research Project: „Namibian-German Relations and Normative Challenges: Beyond the Constrictions of International Development and International Relations?“ with Prof. Dr. Gunther Hellmann and Dr. Martin Weber.

Publications (selection):
Books (Co-Authored)
2014. Mark T. Berger and Heloise Weber, Rethinking the Third World- International Development and World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave). *This book is published in the ‘Rethinking World Politics Series’ with Prof. Michael Cox (LSE) the Series Editor.

Books (Edited)
2014. The Politics of Development – A Survey (London: Routledege).
2011/2013. Mark T. Berger and Heloise Weber. War, Peace and Progress in the 21st Century: Development, Violence and Insecurity (London: Routledge). *This co-edited volume is a reprinted version of a Special Issue of Third World Quarterly, April 2010, 30(1).
2007/2013. Mark T. Berger and Heloise Weber. Recognition and Redistribution- Beyond International Development (London: Routledge). *This co-edited volume is a reprinted version of a Special Issue of Globlalizations, 2007, 4(4).

Articles (refereed)
2018. ‘Deprivation and Discrimination: Politics of “Political” Analysis’, contribution to the ‘Collective Discussion: Diagnosing the Present’ with R.J.B. Walker, Robbie Shilliam and Gitte Du Plessis.  International Political Sociology, 12(1): 88-107. https://academic.oup.com/ips/article/12/1/88/4897847
2017. ‘Politics of “Leaving No One Behind”: Contesting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals’. Globalizations, 14(3): 399-414.
2015. ‘Is IPE just ‘boring’ or committed to problematic meta-theoretical assumptions? A critical engagement with the politics of method’. Contexto Internacional: Journal of Global Connections, 37 (3): 913-943.
2007. ‘A Political Analysis of the Formal Comparative Method: Historicizing the Globalization and Development Debate’, Globalizations, 4 (4): 559-572.

Book chapters (refereed)
2016. The political significance of Bandung for development: challenges, contradictions and struggles for justice. In Quynh N. Pham and Robbie Shilliam (Ed.), Meanings of Bandung: postcolonial orders and decolonial visions (pp. 153-164) London, United Kingdom: Rowman & Littlefield.
2016. From land grabs to food sovereignty. In Jan Aart Scholte, Lorenzo Fioramonti and Alfred G. Nhema (Ed.), New rules for global justice: structural redistribution in the global economy (pp. 109-124) London, United Kingdom: Rowman & Littlefield.
2016. Gender and microfinance/microcredit. In Jill Steans and Daniela Tepe-Belfrage (Ed.), Handbook on gender in world politics (pp. 430-437) Cheltenham, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar.
2013. ‘Global Politics of Human Security’. In Mustapha K Pasha (ed.), Globalisation, Difference and Human Security (London: Routledge), pp. 27-37.

Events:
Fellowkolloquium
Namibian-German Relations and Normative Challenges: Beyond the Constrictions of International Development and International Relations?
28 June 2018, 11 am.

Seminar
„De-centring IR: Towards the Critique of Global Development and Political Ecology“
2 – 6 July 2018, at Goethe-University.

Masterclass
„De-centring IR: Towards the Critique of Global Development and Political Ecology“
3 July 2018, 10 am – 4.30 pm at Goethe-University.