ISA 2026 Proposals

My two proposals under consideration for ISA 2026

I’ve just submitted the following two proposals that are under consideration for ISA 2026 - the International Studies Association’s annual convention, which will be held in Columbus OH on 22nd - 26th March 2026.

I was last at ISA physically in Toronto, Canada, in 2014, and have had to turn down two other invitations, due to 0% research time / institutional support and past work commitments during peak time periods for national and international grant funders. I presented to ISA’s second virtual conference in 2024 (and unfortunately missed the deadline for the upcoming third virtual conference).

The Political Economy of Ideologically Motivated Metapolitical Publishers

Between the United States Presidential elections in 2016 and 2024, the so-called MAGA Movement was able to develop a network of independent metapolitical publishers in the US, and in Europe and Australia. Campaigns to deplatform these publishers from major digital platforms; wholesale publishing distributors; and dominant payment systems have proved unsuccessful.

Independent metapolitical publishers engage openly in contentious politics. They actively articulate, develop, produce and disseminate counterknowledge that lies outside the global university system and academic publishers. Ideologically, this is leading to a renewal of Dissident Right, Reactionary, Traditionalist, Authoritarian, Fascist and National Socialist metapolitical ideas that is a blind-spot for many political scientists because this material is often not included – or discussed in great detail – in major textbooks in terms of memetic belief structures and primary source documentation.

This also has implications for personnel screening; security clearance practices; secure compartmented information facilities; counterdeception / counterespionage / counterintelligence including against possible and plausible insider threats; and effective strategic and tactical level psychological operations.

This paper provides initial findings from a five year self-funded post-PhD research program to address their mission to address ISA 2026’s major theme of multiple crises via facilitating ideological belief adoption and strengthening its deeper immersion.

Teaching Foreign Policy and Geopolitical Risk Arbitrage

The renewed China-Russia axis; a nuclear North Korea; and the AUKUS and Quad security compacts in the Indo-Pacific have galvanised the contemporary importance of comparative foreign policy, geopolitics, and complex, multi-stakeholder diplomacy and negotiations for Australia. These are popular topics for both undergraduate and postgraduate students.

ISA 2026’s multiple crises require a transdisciplinary and integrative teaching approach that must go beyond the field / discipline norms of international relations and political science. This paper addresses the cumulative, iterative development of teaching foreign policy and geopolitics at Australia’s Monash University and Swinburne Online / Swinburne University of Technology from a non-dominant stance: the adjunct / precariat-like casual sessional academic who has a self-funded research program, and who late-in-life was formally diagnosed as autistic / neurodivergent. I also do so from a compassionate, de-stigmatising, empathetic “lived experience” (adversity / trauma) perspective that informs “in classroom” facilitation delivery, individually tailored feedback in marking and moderation, and quality assurance contributions.

This paper explains how a situated learning and practitioner reflective pedagogy is used to teach Open Source Intelligence practices about how foreign policy works, and how and why geopolitical risk arbitrage has become popular in both alternative asset management and for self-styled social media influencers.