Join us for the Montague Burton Chair in International Relations Inaugural Lecture, which will mark the appointment of Professor Neta Crawford to this highly prestigious position.

Professor Crawford will deliver the Lecture: The ‘Fierce Urgency of Now’: war, climate, and change in the deep time of world politics. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception

Further information on the lecture: The nature of this particular historical moment in world politics is fraught. Martin Luther King once said that “we are confronted with the fierce urgency of now” and that “there is such a thing as being too late.”

The urgency of our times is not simply because of a confluence of political and ecological crises. The crises are in part themselves a consequence of the ways different and sometimes dissonant, understandings of time play out and are played out in politics. Political actors are operating with different and indeed often clashing senses of time and on different time frames.

If it is not “too late” how do we get out of the conundrums facing humanity?

More about Professor Neta Crawford FBA

Professor Crawford is the Montague Burton Chair in International Relations at Oxford University, Department in Politics and International Relations and also holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College.

Her research focuses on war, ethics, normative change, emotions in world politics, and climate change. Neta was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2023. She received the Distinguished Scholar award from the International Ethics section of the International Studies Association in 2018.

Neta won the ‘Anti-Censorship Award’ in the 44th American Book Awards for her book The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions (MIT Press, 2022). She was a co-winner of the 2003 American Political Science Association Jervis and Schroeder Award for best book in International History and Politics for her book Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, Humanitarian Intervention (CUP, 2002).

Neta is a co-founder and co-director of the Costs of War Project, based at Brown University.

Event Schedule
4.30pm – 4.55pm: Registration
5pm prompt: Inaugural Lecture will start:
Opening remarks
Professor Neta Crawford: The ‘Fierce Urgency of Now’: War, climate, and change in the deep time of world politics
Closing remarks
6pm – 7pm: Drinks Reception