Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men <\/strong>by Patricia Owens<\/strong> reveals how men diminished women\u2019s <\/em>role in shaping International Relations as an academic discipline in Britain. Drawing on meticulous research, this compelling book highlights how this erasure took place and restores the scholarship of these overlooked women to its rightful place in the story of IR\u2019s history, writes Shireen Manocha<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men<\/em>. Patricia Owens. Princeton University Press. 2025.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Professor Patricia Owens\u2019 2025 book, Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men, <\/em>takes on the crucial task of bringing to light the invisibilised contributions of women in the construction of International Relations (IR) as a discipline in Britain. Her carefully chosen cohort, including Lucie Barbier Zimmern, Margery Perham, Eileen Power, Lucy Philip Mair, Lilian Friedl\u00e4nder Vr\u00e1nek, Merze Tate, Agnes Headlam-Morley, Claudia Jones, Margaret Cleeve, Coral Bell, Rachel Wall, Susan Strange (9) among others, represents the female figures who were instrumental in the foundation of IR, but whose contributions were later erased from the history of how the discipline developed. As the book shows, there were not only barriers to entry for women in the academy, but even those who overcame them were systematically erased. The book is an important addition to scholarship recovering the history of the discipline by centring voices that have been marginalised (see, for example, Owens, et. al., <\/em>2022<\/a>) as a Eurocentric, masculine narrative prevails.<\/p>\n IR was a feminised field at the time of its construction \u2013 it was only later that the contributions of the women were erased.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Owens argues that women\u2019s diverse scholarship shaped both the content and method that IR came to emphasise. A significant example of how one such contribution was erased is in the \u2018first great debate\u2019, usually considered foundational to the establishment of the discipline. Rather than the realism\/idealism debate, Owens instead suggests, it was the debate between Nicholas Spykman and Lucie Zimmern \u2013 between the former\u2019s American social science imagination of IR and the latter\u2019s focus on polyphonic internationalism (35-36) \u2013 that shaped future IR debates (43). Chapter one traces\u00a0Zimmern\u2019s central role in establishing The Geneva School of International Studies, as well in structuring\u00a0 its intellectual agenda (28). She also led an emphasis on \u201ccultural internationalism\u201d (with a focus on music, cinema etc. from around the world) (31-32) in the study of IR. Yet, disciplinary histories only remember her in relation to her husband, Alfred Zimmern (27). As Owens insists, IR was a feminised field at the time of its construction (4) \u2013 it was only later that the contributions of the women were erased.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n This choice to examine the personal lives of the women \u2013 their partners, family backgrounds, financial and health situations \u2013 demonstrates how the personal is indeed the political. Owens focuses, importantly, on the intimate\/casual\/informal spaces where IR and its debates were shaped, specifically by women, and then left out of disciplinary histories. In this way, she also uncovers the construction or formation of the discipline beyond the university \u2013 the \u201cwives\u201d of IR who would write and edit chapters, but never be credited. This resonates with the feminist understanding of the division of labour into the public and the private<\/a>, where the latter, the work of the women that helped men publish, is sidelined. Owens shows how formulating a discipline goes beyond academia and what is defined as \u201cintellectual\u201d work.\u00a0<\/p>\n The development of IR was interlaced with the legacies of empire: it was in parallel to and against the discourses on empire that IR was manifested as a discipline.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Additionally, the detailed descriptions of the experiences of the women within the academy and beyond also demonstrates the different ways in which invisibilisation and marginalisation are imposed structurally and institutionally. For example, the book shows that the project of a \u201cseparate discipline of IR\u201d was defined against the very scholarship that was primarily the domain of women: in prioritising sociological approaches, the historical work of (mainly) women scholars was sidelined as \u201cdescriptive and non-analytical\u201d (108). The erasure shows up in many ways, most revealingly in a \u201cpolitics of memorialisation,\u201d where debates about whether the women and their contributions should or should not be honoured \u2013 and at what moment of history \u2013 are illustrative of the devaluation of their work, as in the case of Margaret Cleeve (64).<\/p>\n The intersections of race, class, and gender also work to marginalise and erase women\u2019s contributions. It is impossible to forget that the development of IR is interlaced with the legacies of empire: it was in parallel to and against the discourses on empire that IR was manifested as a discipline. (For more on empire, imperialism and IR, see: Barkawi, 2010<\/a>; Bayly, 2021<\/a>). In the 1950s and 60s, with the empire continuing to be a reality, \u201cimperialism\u201d vanished from the subject-matter of the discipline of IR (209). This led to the contributions of black and brown scholars being sidelined and erased from what came to be British IR (208-209). Thus, although \u201cClaudia Jones was one of the most influential international thinkers in 1950s and 1960s Britain,\u201d (209) the later equation of \u201cBritish\u201d with \u201cwhite\u201d meant that her contributions did not make it into the canon of British IR (230-231).\u00a0<\/p>\n Additionally, the complexity that the book is dealing with is also underlined in the fact that many of these women were imperialists. Though we may take issue with their politics, it remains important to highlight the scholarship and work of these women because it determined the paths the discipline did or did not follow.<\/p>\n The book successfully challenges the masculine, selective story of IR, brings women\u2019s work to light and excavates the interlinked hierarchies, those of race, class, empire, sexual identity etc, that work to marginalise the women. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The book\u2019s methodological rigour is impressive. Owens goes into great detail \u2013 uncovered through her close reading of official papers, manuscripts, personal papers and the like \u2013 to piece together the lives, journeys and work of these women, and the different challenges they faced at the time, as well as how they eventually came to be erased. Most interestingly, in the case of Rachel Wall (Chapter 10), Owens reads through her personal notes, medical reports, university reports and the like to piece together the story of how her own health condition was used to push her out of the academy. Drawing on this rich research, the book is written in a compelling, easy-to-read manner, the stories weaving into a seamless narrative.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The title of Erased<\/em> perhaps underplays the work the book does in highlighting just how active and calculated the endeavour of effacing women\u2019s contribution to the discipline was. This erasure was perpetrated largely by <\/em>men \u2013 not without them. The book successfully challenges the masculine, selective story of IR, brings women\u2019s work to light and excavates the interlinked hierarchies, those of race, class, empire, sexual identity etc, that work to marginalise the women. (I am grateful to Dr James Morrison (LSE) for several engaging discussions on the points in this paragraph). Owens\u2019 milestone work invites future research that could pull more deeply on these threads.\u00a0Overall, Erased<\/em> is a must read for any serious student of the discipline. In highlighting these erasures, the book also reminds a new generation of female IR scholars the value of their own work and scholarship.<\/p>\n Note:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.<\/em><\/p>\n Image:<\/strong> Photo Alfred and Lucie Zimmern (front row, centre), with students of the \u2018Zimmern <\/em>School\u2019 \u00a9 The European Consortium for Political Science\u2019s blog, The Loop<\/a>.<\/p>\n Enjoyed this post?\u00a0<\/em>Subscribe to our newsletter<\/em><\/a>\u00a0for a round-up of the latest reviews sent straight to your inbox every other Tuesday.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nUncovering women\u2019s buried contributions to International Relations<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>Across the 11 chapters, Owens traces the lives, journeys, and experiences of the cohort of women. She dives into their scholarship, teaching and disciplinary beliefs; their personal backgrounds and how those shaped their trajectories; their experiences with academia and the university setting; and finally the ways in which their work was either undermined, marginalised, or actively forgotten. The various characters either meet or do not at different points in the construction of the discipline, and this too determines the trajectory \u2013 not only of their own careers but the discipline itself. This includes both the powerful men that these women encounter, as teachers, colleagues, lovers, as well as the relationships between the women themselves, how they receive knowledge and support from each other and how they impact each other\u2019s careers.\u00a0<\/p>\nHow men pushed women\u2019s work to the margins<\/h2>\n
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Race, empire and the erasure of non-white scholars<\/h2>\n
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A landmark re-appraisal of the discipline<\/h2>\n
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