Annette Freyberg-Inan is Professor of International Relations Theory. She is a generalist in Political Science and International Relations, with particular expertise on theoretical and methodological terrain. Her research spans International Relations and International Political Economy, European integration and EU enlargement,  transitions in Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey, and political protest. She teaches in the fields of International/World Politics, European Politics, Political Theory, Political Psychology, and Social Science Methodology.

After obtaining her PhD from the University of Georgia, USA in 1998, she worked until 2003 in Bucharest, Romania as a Visiting Faculty Fellow for the Civic Education Project (CEP) and Consultant for the United Nations Resident Coordinator System. In 2003 she joined the University of Amsterdam. In 2013 she took up a chair in International Relations at the University of Darmstadt, followed by a research fellowship at the University of Edinburgh. Since 2015 she is again teaching and researching at the University of Amsterdam. In the years 2017 to 2023 she served as dean of its Graduate School of Social Sciences.

Annette Freyberg-Inan has been vice-president of the International Studies Association, chair of its Theory Section, and held a range of other officerships in the International Studies Association and the Central and Eastern European International Studies Association. She has been an editor of the Romanian Journal of Society and Politics, the Journal of International Relations and Development, and the European Journal of International Relations, and serves on a range of advisory boards.

Annette Freyberg-Inan is Professor of International Relations Theory. She is a generalist in Political Science and International Relations, with particular expertise on theoretical and methodological terrain. Her research spans International Relations and International Political Economy, European integration and EU enlargement,  transitions in Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey, and political protest. She teaches in the fields of International/World Politics, European Politics, Political Theory, Political Psychology, and Social Science Methodology.

After obtaining her PhD from the University of Georgia, USA in 1998, she worked until 2003 in Bucharest, Romania as a Visiting Faculty Fellow for the Civic Education Project (CEP) and Consultant for the United Nations Resident Coordinator System. In 2003 she joined the University of Amsterdam. In 2013 she took up a chair in International Relations at the University of Darmstadt, followed by a research fellowship at the University of Edinburgh. Since 2015 she is again teaching and researching at the University of Amsterdam. In the years 2017 to 2023 she served as dean of its Graduate School of Social Sciences.

Annette Freyberg-Inan has been vice-president of the International Studies Association, chair of its Theory Section, and held a range of other officerships in the International Studies Association and the Central and Eastern European International Studies Association. She has been an editor of the Romanian Journal of Society and Politics, the Journal of International Relations and Development, and the European Journal of International Relations, and serves on a range of advisory boards.

Forthcoming: Universitas: Why Higher Education Must Be International (Lexington Books / Bloomsbury Publishing)

This volume intervenes with passion in the debate on the virtues, challenges, and pitfalls of internationalizing higher education. It unites voices of academics from around the globe with considerable experience with international higher education in well-considered defense of the university as a public space transcending locality, counteracting parochialism, and defending the quality of scholarship. All authors writing in this volume have themselves followed international trajectories, across different parts of the world. At the same time, all are now settled academics. They have been observing the relevant trends in their work environments and have been actively involved in managing them. This volume brings their informed auto-ethnographic reflections in conversation with each other and connects them into a systematic analysis that allows us to recognize and communicate the virtues of internationalizing higher education and to better navigate its challenges and pitfalls. At the same time, the auto-biographical subtexts of the contributions vividly illustrate how international experiences contribute to personal and professional development and, in this manner, help make the case for defending the internationalization of higher education against its detractors.

This book examines Turkey’s treatment of religious minorities in relation to its complex paths of both European integration and domestic and international reorientation. The expectations of Turkey’s EU and other international counterparts, as well as important domestic demands, pushed Turkey to broaden the rights of religious and other minorities in the 1990s and 2000s, after which time some earlier achievements were rolled back and new challenges have arisen. This book shows how these broader processes affect the lives of three important religious groups in Turkey: the Alevi as a large Muslim community and the Christian communities of Armenians and Syriacs. Drawing on a wealth of original data and extensive fieldwork, the authors compare and explain improvements, set-backs, and lingering concerns for Turkey’s religious minorities and identify important challenges for Turkey’s future democratic development and European path.

This book offers a systematic evaluation of how knowledge is produced by scholarly research into International Relations. The contributors explore three key questions: To what extent is scientific progress and accumulation of knowledge possible? What are the different accounts of how this process takes place? And what are the dominant critiques of these understandings? It is the first publication to survey the full range of perspectives available for evaluating scientific progress as well as dominant critiques of scientism. In its second part, the volume applies this range of perspectives to the research program on the democratic peace. It shows what we gain by accommodating and enabling dialogue among the full range of epistemological approaches. The editors elaborate and defend the epistemological position of sociable pluralism as one that seeks to build bridges between soft positivism, critical theory, and critical realism. The underlying idea is that if the differences between the various approaches used by different communities of researchers can be understood more clearly, this will facilitate meaningful cross-cutting communication, dialogue, and debate and thereby enable us to address real-world problems more effectively.

This book provides an overview of relations between the European Union and Turkey. Is Turkish EU membership still a realistic option? How has this relationship evolved so far, and with what benefits for both sides? What are currently the main challenges to closer relations and cooperation? The authors explain the core themes in EU-Turkish relations today. The resulting overall picture is one of ambivalence: Turkey and the EU have grown together in important ways, and both sides have benefited from this process. However, the process is neither linear nor irreversible, we find increasing tensions in this relationship, and it appears impossible at the time of writing to predict how EU-Turkish relations will evolve even in the near future.

Since the 1980s, the discipline of International Relations has seen a series of disputes over its foundations. However, there has been one core concept that, although addressed in various guises, had never been explicitly and systematically engaged with in these debates: the human. This volume is the first to address comprehensively the topic of the human in world politics. It comprises cutting-edge accounts by leading scholars of how the human is (or is not) theorized across the entire range of IR theories, old and new. The authors provide a solid foundation for future debates about how, why, and to which ends the human has been or must (not) be built into our theories, and systematically lay out the implications of such moves for how we come to see world politics and humanity's role within it.

^Reviews

^{‘Human Beings in International Relations is a theoretical treasure trove. Jacobi and Freyberg-Inan make us aware of a remarkable variety of theoretical perspectives on ‘thinking the human’. They make those perspectives resonate with or contradict each other, unburying many research paths that must have been there all along, but still await our analysis.’ Stefano Guzzini - Danish Institute for International Studies, Uppsala University and Pontifical Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro}

^{‘Talk of 'human nature', once common in international theory and international studies, has been much less prominent in recent decades. But thinking about the category of 'the human' can never be too foreign to any account of social life, and international affairs are no exception. This remarkable volume foregrounds both the extent to which our existing theoretical tools are interwoven with assumptions about human nature, and makes possible a series of considerations reaching beyond those assumptions.’ Patrick Thaddeus Jackson - Associate Dean, School of International Service, American University, Washington DC}

^{'It is a collection that accomplishes to a large extent what the editors Jacobi and Freyberg-Inan in their introduction promise to deliver: 'a comprehensive, balanced, open-minded, and up-to-date study of the human element, its relation to world politics, and our ways of producing knowledge about them.' Asli Calkivik, International Studies Review}

This book draws on the work of international scholars from diverse perspectives to provide a timely, focused debate on the future of realist theory in international relations. Part I presents novel contributions to realist theory building, including suggested elaborations of Mearsheimer's offensive realist variant, a reconsideration of the role of revisionism in structural realist theory, a bridge to the English School of international relations, and a critique of trends in realist theorizing since the end of the Cold War. In part II, structural and neoclassical realists provide empirical analyses of foreign policy behavior, the role of geopolitics, and the grand strategies of major powers. The chapters in part III assess the viability of theways forward for realism from realist, critical, and feminist perspectives. This tightly integrated intellectual exchange presents a transnational overview of the evolution and potential future of the realist paradigm. The volume editors conclude with an assessment of the current state of realism and suggest ways for the debate to progress.   

_Reviews

_{"This volume brings together some of the most interesting theoretical discussions the field has seen on realism in a number of years... the book provides the best overview of contemporary discourse on realism. The authors and editors break new ground and move beyond the old shibboleths. All those interested in the future of realism and whether (and how) it can move forward will want to read this book." -- John A. Vasquez, University of Illinois at Urbana -Champaign}   

_{"All those who think that realism is an exhausted topic should take this book as antidote. Unusually balanced and varied, Rethinking Realism in International Relations unites realists and critics alike for pushing realism outside the beaten path." -- Stefano Guzzini, Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen & Uppsala University , Sweden}

How can democracy be learned? And how successful are we at teaching and learning it? This book makes three contributions: First, it explains why civic education is important for the growth and survival of (any type of) democracy. Second, it focuses on a particular country, which is in many ways representative for the general problems of post-communist transition to democracy. It carefully examines the practical reality of civic education in Romania both at the level of general schooling and in higher education. Emphasis lies on the ways in which the ideals of civic education clash with post-communist realities and on the obstacles that continue to exist in this transition country to the democratic empowerment of citizens through education. Scarcity of resources, corruption in many forms, and attitudes of deference to authority, among other problems, perpetuate a situation in which education fails to support democratization and instead reflects the failures of regimes of the past. Third, the book offers concrete recommendations for how civic education in Romania (and elsewhere) can be improved. How can education be organized to successfully support the realization of democratic ideals? This book is based on its main author's direct experience working in the field of civic education in Romania between 1999 and 2005 and draws on her wider expertise in the study of Romanian political economy and the country's European integration as well as in the fields of political psychology and democratic theory. It is of particular interest for teachers and social scientists willing to reflect on the implications of their teaching or research for democratic empowerment, forpolicymakers and activists who seek to support processes of democratization, as well as for students of post-communist transition countries in general and of Romania in particular. It provides an accessible, informative, and frequently humorous account of lofty ideals clashing with harsh realities on the battlefield of democratic emancipation.

A critical look at the image of human nature that underlies the realist theory of international relations
The realist theory of international relations is based on a particularly gloomy set of assumptions about universal human motives. Believing people to be essentially asocial, selfish, and untrustworthy, realism counsels a politics of distrust and competition in the international arena. What Moves Man subjects realism to a broad and deep critique. Freyberg-Inan argues, first, that realist psychology is incomplete and suffers from a pessimistic bias. Second, she explains how this bias systematically undermines both realist scholarship and efforts to promote international cooperation and peace. Third, she argues that realism's bias has a tendency to function as a self-fulfilling prophecy: it nurtures and promotes the very behaviors it assumes predominate human nature. Freyberg-Inan concludes by suggesting how a broader and more complex view of human motivation would deliver more complete explanations of international behavior, reduce the risk of bias, and better promote practical progress in the conduct of international affairs.

_Reviews

_{"This is the best treatment of realism I have seen from an interdisciplinary standpoint. It borrows from philosophy, psychology, history, and elsewhere to provide a comprehensive assessment of realism as an interpretation of human nature and international relations." - Patrick James, author of International Relations and Scientific Progress: Structural Realism Reconsidered}

_{"Freyberg-Inan is able to place the major historical works and the more recent literature in a much broader philosophical and scientific context. I don't know of a better overall critique of realism." - William O. Chittick, author of American Foreign Policy: History, Substance, and Process}

I currently teach a PhD seminar on research design and a Master Thesis Research Project on "Alternatives to Capitalism: Models for a Future Society" and contribute to the 3rd-year Bachelor course "Great Books You Want to Read".

I currently (co-)supervise the PhD projects of:

• Tito Bachmayer, “The Many Faces of Cosmopolitanism: Cosmopolitanism and Transnationalization in the Dutch Professional Middle Class” (with Nico Wilterdink)
• Metin Inanc Unaltekin, “Between Homes: The Greek Minority in Turkey and in Greece” (with Beste Isleyen)
• Daniel Zach Sloman, “Adverse Inclusion in International Development” (with Karim Kniou)

I currently teach a PhD seminar on research design and a Master Thesis Research Project on "Alternatives to Capitalism: Models for a Future Society" and contribute to the 3rd-year Bachelor course "Great Books You Want to Read".

I currently (co-)supervise the PhD projects of:

• Tito Bachmayer, “The Many Faces of Cosmopolitanism: Cosmopolitanism and Transnationalization in the Dutch Professional Middle Class” (with Nico Wilterdink)
• Metin Inanc Unaltekin, “Between Homes: The Greek Minority in Turkey and in Greece” (with Beste Isleyen)
• Daniel Zach Sloman, “Adverse Inclusion in International Development” (with Karim Kniou)