Carl Beck Award

The Carl Beck Award, established in 1980, is presented on an annual basis to a graduate student for his or her paper in the field of International Studies. Carl Beck was aware that the field of international relations faced difficult new challenges. To respond to those challenges it must be adaptive and innovative, open to new ideas, perspectives and approaches. The Committee therefore looks for original papers that deal with traditional concerns in new and interesting ways or with emergent international conditions and problems.

Congratulations to the 2026 Car Beck Award recipient, Wendy He! 

Dr. Wendy He was selected as the 2026 Carl Beck Award winner for her innovative and interdisciplinary paper, “The Confidence Trap: Leader‑Advisor Deliberations and the Making of (In)Credible Threats,” presented at the 2025 ISA Annual Convention. Drawing on international security studies, history, and political psychology, the paper introduces the “Confidence Trap Theory,” which explains how internal deliberations between leaders and advisors shape the credibility of military threats. Through detailed case studies of U.S. and Chinese decision‑making at the outset of the Korean War, Dr. He demonstrates how overconfidence and advisory dynamics can distort strategic judgment and undermine deterrence. Supported by extensive multilingual archival research and interviews, her work offers an original and compelling contribution to the study of international security and decision‑making.

Deborah Gerner Innovative Teaching Award

The Deborah Gerner Innovative Teaching in International Studies Award honors the legacy of Misty Gerner as not only a fine scholar, but also as a passionate and dedicated teacher and mentor. Sponsored to carry her memory and mission forward by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers and the editorial board of the New Millennium Books in International Studies, the award is granted annually to an instructor who has developed effective new approaches to teaching in the discipline. Examples could include innovative case studies, teaching software, and simulations. Preference will be given to materials that can be easily adapted by other instructors. In keeping with Misty’s interests and commitments and the goals of the New Millennium Book Series, emphasis will be on pedagogy that engages students with issues of war, peace, identity, sovereignty, security, and sustainability—economic, environmental, or ethical—as they are evolving in the 21st century.

Congratulations to the 2026 Deborah Gerner Innovative Teaching Award, Kaian Lam! 

The committee is pleased to recognize Dr. Kaian Lam as this year's recipient of the Teaching Award. Dr. Lam's nomination stood out for its exceptional attention to detail and the evident care and creativity she brings to her classrooms. As a early career scholar from the non-western academy, she brings a distinctive and critically engaged perspective to her teaching, consistently challenging conventional and hegemonic pedagogical approaches. Her commitment to fostering inclusive and intellectually rigorous learning environments reflects the highest standards of teaching excellence. The committee unanimously agreed that Dr. Lam exemplifies the spirit and values this award seeks to honor.

J. Ann Tickner Award

The Tickner award was established in 2011 to recognize J. Ann Tickner for her pathbreaking role within the International Studies Association and in the discipline of International Relations more generally. This award recognizes someone who, in Tickner’s footsteps, consistently combines bravery in pursuing high-quality, pioneering scholarship that pushes the boundaries of the discipline with a deep commitment to service, especially teaching and mentoring.

Congratulations to the 2026 J. Ann Tickner Award recipient, Lindsey Kingston!

Dr. Lindsey Kingston embodies the spirit of the J. Ann Tickner Award through scholarship that is both intellectually courageous and deeply influential. Her work has pushed the boundaries of human rights and citizenship studies, from award-winning research on statelessness and personhood to a major new project on the weaponization of citizenship. Just as importantly, she pairs that scholarly leadership with extraordinary dedication to teaching and mentoring, bringing students into genuine research partnerships, creating innovative learning opportunities, and changing lives through sustained care and support. In every part of her career, she has combined pioneering scholarship with the kind of service, generosity, and commitment to students that this award was created to honor.

James N. Rosenau Award 

James N. Rosenau’s innovative work, honors the scholar who has made the most important contributions to globalization studies. A past president of the International Studies Association and a pioneer in globalization research, Jim Rosenau offered great insights into the intersection of domestic and foreign affairs, boundary spanning actors in world politics, and parametric transformations in our field. This award recognizes his role as a pillar of the international studies community and leader in globalization research.

Congratulations to the 2026 James N. Rosenau Award recipient, Paul James!

Professor Paul James, Emeritus Professor of Globalization and Cultural Diversity at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, has made sustained and influential contributions to the field of globalization studies. As the author or editor of more than 30 books, including Globalization Matters: Engaging the Global in Unsettled Times and Global Crisis and Insecurity: The Human Condition, Darkly, his scholarship has helped shape contemporary understanding of globalization. Widely recognized as a leading theorist, his work explores how local and national communities are transformed through global integration. Professor James has also strengthened the field through major institutional initiatives, including leadership of the Global Cities research program, the UN Global Compact Cities Programme, and the Globalism Institute. In recognition of his lasting scholarly, institutional, and policy contributions to globalization studies, we are honored to present him with the James N. Rosenau Award.

ISA John Ruggie Annual Best Book Award 

The John Ruggie ISA Best Book Award is conferred for the best book in the field of international studies with a copyright dated the year before the nomination.

Congratulations to the 2026 ISA John Ruggie Annual Best Book Award recipient, Yolanda Ariadne Collins for her book Forests of Refuge! 

Forests of Refuge tackles two of the biggest challenges in contemporary international affairs—climate change and the ongoing legacy of colonialism—and does so in a way that is attentive to the plurality of voices at each of the sites of this multi-sited ethnography. Yolanda Ariadne Collins urges us to think of coloniality as encompassing a variety of analytically distinct but empirically overlapping governmentalities, which support governance strategies and interventions that aim to make Amazonian forests and the people who inhabit them into assets to be used instrumentally. Against this background, Collins explores the ways in which sites of coloniality can become sites of decolonial activity — and not through a nativist return to a pre-colonial indigeneity. Instead, the task she undertakes is to tease apart those strands of our contemporary efforts to confront climate change that reproduce the very colonial relations that sought to reduce people and things to objects, so that we might imagine alternative futures.

Karl Deutsch Award 

Named for Karl Deutsch, this award was established in 1981 to recognize scholars in IR under age 45, or within fifteen years of defending their dissertation, by the end of th eyear in which nominations are considered. The Karl Deutsch Award is presented annually to a scholar who is judged to have made (through a body of publications) the most significant contribution to the study of International Relations and Peace Research.

Congratulations to the 2026 Karl Deutsch Award recipient, Allison Carnegie!

The International Studies Association’s Karl Deutsch Award Committee proudly selected Prof. Allison Carnegie for the 2026 Karl Deutsch Award. The Karl Deutsch Award, which is turning 45 years itself this year, recognizes a scholar under the age of 45, or within fifteen years of defending their dissertation, for the most significant contribution to the study of International Relations and Peace Research. Prof. Carnegie has a stellar publication record that is impressive both in quantitative and qualitative terms, and advances our understanding of IR and peace.

Prof. Carnegie studies the role of international organizations (IOs) in international relations and provides new theories about the problems they do and do not solve, the conditions under which they facilitate international political and economic cooperation among states, and how they adapt to challenges. She has conducted research on the role of international institutions for coercive diplomacy, as well as on secrets in global governance. Also Prof. Carnegie’s most recent work that focuses on how IOs resist the current wave of populism and save global governance institutions, is particularly relevant and timely in the current geopolitical environment. In addition to her significant contributions to the role of IOs in IR, she also has a distinguished publication record on peace issues. This includes research on covert military forces, the role of foreign aid for rebel rulers, UN Peacekeeping after the pandemic, the role of peacekeeping for protecting civilians in civil wars and nuclear intelligence.

She has solo-authored one monograph and co-authored two more. In addition, she has published 24 academic articles, which have appeared in some of the discipline’s most prestigious journals, such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Journal of Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Organization, and Review of International Organizations. In addition to her scholarly contributions, Prof. Carnegie has written for a wider public in Foreign Affairs and the Washington Post, highlighting her impact beyond the academy.

The Award Committee was impressed by Prof. Carnegie’s substantive contributions in both International Relations and Peace Research. She has not only excelled at several different domains of research, but also had a measurable impact on each of them. This is also evidenced by the fact that her work has been cited over 2,000 times, more than 860 times alone in the last three years. For her work, she has received several prizes and awards, including the Best Book Award of the APSA International Collaboration Section, the David Lake Award for the Best Paper Presented at the 2019 IPES Conference, and IO's 2018 Robert Keohane Award for best research published by an untenured scholar.

 In conclusion, Prof. Carnegie has an impressive track record of high-quality, high-impact publications on a broad variety of key questions in the field of IR and peace research. For this reason, the Committee is proud to award her this year’s Karl Deutsch Award.

Ladd Hollist Service Award

At the 2005 Annual Meeting in Hawaii, the ISA Governing Council approved the creation of a new award to be called the Ladd Hollist Service Award, established as an annual ISA Award in recognition of his outstanding service and commitment to our Association. Ladd’s personal ethics and strength of character helped build the reputation of and re spect for the ISA in the world community of international scholars, and provided the ISA with a fundamental base of organizational stability and financial integrity.

Congratulations to the 2026 Ladd Hollist Service Award recipient, Erica Simone Alemida Resende!

The Recipient of the 2026 ISA Ladd Hollist Service Award, for outstanding service and commitment to the Association, is: Dr. Erica Simone Almeida Resende, of the Brazilian War College, whose breadth of experience and strength of character respect the legacy of Ladd Hollist. Dr. Resende is currently President of Latin America & Caribbean Region, and was elected by the Governing Council to serve as an at-large member of the Executive Committee two years in a row. She is just stepping down from her thoughtful and diligent engagement on the Academic Freedom Committee. ISA members benefited from Dr. Resende’s leadership first as a member and then chair of the Committee on the Status of Representation and Diversity. During her tenure, she placed on the agenda significant issues, including language equity, mental health, a more globally inclusive recognition of diversity, and a formal policy for acknowledging the indigenous peoples upon whose land we hold our meetings and manage our association.

Previously, Dr. Resende was the 2023 Virtual Conference Program Chair, and At-Large Representative for the IPS section. As President of LAC, Dr. Resende was a leading force in the successful second conference of the region, held in Sao Paolo and co-sponsored with the Diplomatic Studies Section and the Brazilian Association of International Relations.

Susan S. Northcutt Award 

The Susan S. Northcutt Award was established in 2003 by the Women's Caucus for International Studies (WCIS) to honor the Caucus’ founder, Susan S. Northcutt. The award recognizes a person who actively works towards recruiting and advancing women and other underrepresented scholars in the profession, whose spirit is inclusive, generous and conscientious, and who has made significant contributions through service and competence to the field of international studies and to the International Studies Association. 

Congralations to the 2026 Susan S. Northcutt Award recipient, Anne Sisson Runyun!

Anne Sisson Runyan was selected for the Susan S. Northcutt Award due to her lifelong commitment to advancing women and underrepresented scholars in the field of international studies. As a pioneering feminist scholar, she helped found both the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies (FTGS) section and the ISA Women’s Caucus, ensuring a permanent space for inclusive and gender-focused research within the International Studies Association. Her leadership roles, including serving as an ISA Vice President, involved critical contributions such as crafting inclusivity language for the organization’s constitution and promulgating an anti-global racism statement. Beyond her administrative service, she has been a dedicated mentor, successfully nominating her students for professional leadership positions and receiving awards specifically for her work in improving the status of academic women. Ultimately, she was recognized for her "tremendous dedication" and tireless work as a teacher-scholar who continues to advocate for diverse voices in global politics.

Susan Strange Award 

The Susan Strange Award was established in 1998 to recognize Susan Strange for her unique and extraordinary role within the International Studies Association and the worldwide community of scholars. This award recognizes a person whose singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency in the international studies community. 

Congratulations to the 2026 Susan Strange Award recipient, Anna M. Agathangelou!

This year’s Susan Strange Award recognizes Prof. Anna M. Agathangelou for her pioneering multidisciplinary scholarship in the fields of international relations theory; feminist theory; political economy; science and technology Studies; postcolonial studies, and queer analytics. Working across these fields, Prof. Agathangelou has maintained a focus on justice as this topic relates to matters of the political economy, gender relations, development, and war and peace. One has only to read he seminal monograph The Global Political Economy of Sex: Desire, Violence, and Insecurity in Mediterranean Nation States (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) to understand the masterful and capacious ways in which Anna approaches her subjects and objects of analysis. For her tirelessness in promoting non-Western perspectives, bring poetry into our intellectual discussions, and constantly alerting us to gender, sexuality, violence, and inequality, Prof. Agathangelou is the sort of scholar that our late and mentor Susan strange would have wanted us to honor.