洋志 西海

After working as a research assistant at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) and a programme coordinator at the Hiroshima Peacebuilders Centre (HPC), I completed my PhD at Global Humanities Program, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo. My first monograph Responsibility to Protect in International Political Thought (Kokusai Shoin) was published in 2021, which was based on my doctoral thesis "The Concept of the 'Responsibility to Protect' and the Discourses of International/Global Order in the post-Cold War: from Constitutionalist Vision to Functionalist Rebuilding of the International Order". My research projects are currently centred on the following four topics:

(1) Ontology of international order (JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research – Ontology of International Order: Exploring common grounds of IR based on Philosophy of Language and Sociology).

Philosophical and theoretical deliberation of what the international order is, in other words, 'what kind of existence is the international order itself'. Also, since the existence of international order is considered to be closely interrelated with the discipline of International Relations (IR), historical investigation of the development of IR is an important part of this project. I’m reviewing e. g. C. W. Manning, Nicholas G. Onuf, and Emanuel Adler in IR as well as speech act theories, Ernst Cassirer, Norbert Elias and others in philosophy and sociology.

(2) Time and Space as a foundational framework for International/Global Relations (JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research – Comparative Study for Theoretical Foundation of Global Relations: the temporal turn and beyond).

While examining how time and space are integrated in IR and what kind of understanding of time and space is presupposed in IR, this joint research project seeks to construct Global Relations as a discipline that encompasses IR metatheoretically, based on a inter-disciplinary and in-depth understanding of time and space. My specific theme in this project is to conduct historical research into the process of the formation of the international time order based on “world standard time” from the mid-19th century to the first half of the 20th century, as well as the various “times” that have been rendered invisible in the historical process.

(3) Theoretical development of Securitisation (JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research – Re-examining 'securitisation' for analysis of populism: Fusion of qualitative and quantitative methods).

A joint research project that revisits the 'securitisation' argument, often applied in case studies, and develops a new theoretical framework by conducting theoretical and case studies that synthesise studies on populism and the 'Rally-Round-the-Flag effect', qualitative and quantitative methods, and comparative politics with securitisation debates. My specific theme in this project is to develop a theoretical framework that successfully meshes the so-called 'Copenhagen School' and 'Paris School', based on a detailed examination of the speech act theories.

(4) Realisation and practice of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) (Sophia University Special Grant for Academic Research – Humanitarian Crises in Asia and the “Responsibility to Protect”: From the Comparative Perspective between Japan and Other Countries/Regions).

Joint research project to generate the theoretical and practical knowledge needed to realise the ideal of R2P as 'protecting people from grave humanitarian crises', which is at the core of the R2P concept. As foundational research, I has co-edited the books The Responsibility to Protect: Basic Documents and Commentaries, from the end of the Cold War to 2016 and The Responsibility to Protect from Regional Perspectives: Diverse Implementation of Universal Principle. Recent personal themes include: rethinking the theoretical foundations of R2P, relying on Emmanuel Lévinas; connecting the concept of 'non-indifference' with R2P to generate practical and acceptable policy guidance; and area studies for the realisation of R2P in the Asia region.