Stefanie Ortmann joined the department of International Relations at Sussex in 2009. She completed her PhD in IR at the London School of Economics in 2008 and before Sussex has taught at the American University of Central Asia, Bishkek, and at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her interests concern the effects of the myth of the state in international relations, in particular the return of the concept of Great Power in contemporary world politics and the re-emergence of geopolitics as a way of framing world politics. Her geographic area of research is Russia and the former Soviet space (in particular relations between Russia and Central Asia). Drawing on this geographical focus, she approaches these questions from a critical perspective, highlighting the Eurocentric nature of the discipline and questioning the universalism of "the international". Her theoretical commitments are located in hermeneutic and linguistic approaches to International Relations, drawing on anthropological theories of the state, Koselleckian conceptual history and Critical Geopolitics.

Her most recent publication is: 'Beyond spheres of influence: the myth of the state and Russia’s seductive power in Kyrgyzstan'. Geopolitics, 23 (2). pp. 404-435.