Vivienne Jabri is Professor of International Politics in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and Principal Investigator of the project, Mapping Injury, an ERC (adv) project funded through the UKRI Horizon Europe Guarantee.

Her research focuses on international political theory, critical social and political theory, postcolonialism, and feminist perspectives, with specific interest in the politics of conflict, violence, security, and justice. She has worked with the arts, developing research and co-curating an exhibition, Traces of War (2016) and, more recently, working on an arts and conflict project, Conflict and Injury: Injurious Acts I and II (2023), funded partly through the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation.

Her current research focuses on two areas. The first is the subject of her new forthcoming book, Worlds in Conflict: War and the Limits of Politics (MIT Press, 2025). The book provides a new understanding of war as a constitutive force, implicated in the unmaking and making of worlds, placing the lens on injury in its embodied, sociocultural, political and material manifestations. The second builds on the new book by developing the concept of ‘injury’ in its wider manifestations, beyond war. This five-year project (2022-2027), Mapping Injury, focuses on the Global South, providing an interdisciplinary perspective on injury and the international politics of global justice.

Vivienne Jabri serves on the editorial boards of the journals Security Dialogue and Peacebuilding and is on the International Advisory Board of the journal, International Political Sociology. She served on the 2014 REF panel for Politics and International Relations, was conferred the Distinguished Scholar Award by the Peace Studies section at the International Studies Association in 2015, and the 2018 Supervisory Excellence Award in the Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy at King’s. She has five monographs, including the forthcoming Worlds in Conflict: War and the Limits of Politics (MIT Press, 2025).

Research Interests

• International political theory

• Critical theory

• War

• Global justice

• Art and the Political

PhD Supervision

Professor Jabri will consider applications on:

• The psychosocial and socio-material aspects of war
• Critical thought on injury/harm
• Global Justice

Teaching

Vivienne Jabri has designed and taught MA modules on The Global Governance of conflict and Security, Conflict Culture and the Postcolonial, War and Criminality in Global Politics, and Violence the State and Global Politics.

Publications

Selected:

Books:

• Jabri, Vivienne, Worlds in Conflict: War and the Limits of Politics (forthcoming MIT Press, 2025).
• Jabri, Vivienne, The Postcolonial Subject: Claiming Politics/Governing Others in Late Modernity (Routledge, 2013).
• Jabri, Vivienne, War and the Transformation of Global Politics (Palgrave, 2007, 2010).
• Jabri, Vivienne, Discourses on Violence (Manchester University Press, 1996).
• Jabri, Vivienne, Mediating Conflict (Manchester University Press. 1990).

Co-edited books:

• Jabri, Vivienne and Stephen Chan, Mediation in Southern Africa (Macmillan, 1993).
• Jabri, Vivienne and Eleanor O’Gorman, Women, Culture and International Relations (Lynne Rienner, 1999).

Selected articles and chapters:

• Jabri, Vivienne (2024), ‘War, the Aesthetic, and the Political’, in War and Aesthetics: Art, Technology and the Futures of Warfare, eds, Jens Bjering et al (MIT Press, Cambridge Mass).
• Jabri, Vivienne (2023) ‘Ontology, Relationality, and an Alternative Reading of Difference’, Journal of International Political Theory, Vol. 19 (3), 345-352.
• Jabri, Vivienne and Oliver Richmond (2021), ‘Critical Theory and the Politics of Peace’, The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, eds, O. Richmond and G. Visoka (Oxford University Press).
• Fierke, Karin and Vivienne Jabri (2019) ‘Global conversations: Relationality, embodiment and power in the move towards a Global IR’, Global Constitutionalism, Vol. 8 (3), pp. 506-535.
• Jabri, Vivienne (2017), ‘Global war and the government of populations’, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. 24, pp. 89-103.
• Jabri, Vivienne. (2017) ‘Colonial Rationalities, Postcolonial Subjectivities, and the International’, in C. Epstein (ed) Against International Relations Norms: Postcolonial Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge).
• Jabri, Vivienne (2016) ‘Security: Critique, Analysis, and Ethics’, in J. Nyman and A. Burke (eds) Ethical Security Studies: A New Research Agenda (London and New York: Routledge).
• Jabri, Vivienne (2016) ‘Late Modern Wars and Category Errors’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 47, No. 3, pp. 208-214.
• Jabri, Vivienne (2014) ‘Disarming Norms: Postcolonial Agency and the Constitution of the International’, International Theory, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2014), pp. 372-390.
• Jabri, Vivienne (2014) ‘War and the Contingency of Citizenship’, in Houen, A. (ed) States of War since 9/11 (London and New York: Routledge).
• Bauman, Z., Bigo, D., Esteves, P., Guild, E., Jabri, V., Lyon, D., and Walker, RBJ (2014), ‘After Snowden: Rethinking the Impact of Surveillance’, International Political Sociology, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 121-144.
• Jabri, Vivienne (2013) ‘Bourdieu and Gender’, in R. Adler-Nissen (ed) Bourdieu in International Relations (London and New York Routledge).
• Jabri, Vivienne (2013) ‘Peacebuilding, the Local, and the International: A Colonial or a Postcolonial Rationality’, Peacebuilding, Vol. 1, pp. 3-16.
• Jabri, Vivienne (2012) ‘Cosmopolitan Politics, Security, Political Subjectivity’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 625-644.
• Jabri, Vivienne (2010) ‘War, Government, Politics: A Critical response to the Hegemony of the Liberal Peace’, in Advances on Peacebuilding, ed. Oliver Richmond (Palgrave Macmillan, London and New York.
• Jabri, Vivienne (2008) ‘La torture, une politique de guerre’, in Bigo, D., L. Bonelli, and T. Deltombe (eds.), Au Nom du 11 Septembre (La Decouverte, Paris).
• Jabri, Vivienne (2007) ‘Solidarity and Spheres of Culture: The Cosmopolitan and the Postcolonial’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 33, pp. 715-728.
• Jabri, Vivienne (2007) ‘Michel Foucault’s Analytics of War: The Social, the International, and the Racial’, International Political Sociology, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 67-81.
• Jabri, Vivienne (2006) ‘War, Security and the Liberal State’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2006), pp. 47-64.
• Jabri, Vivienne (2006) ‘Shock and Awe: Power and the Resistance of Art’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 819-839.

For a list of publications please refer to her Research Profile.

Past Projects

Traces of War (2016):

Traces of War was a major exhibition from King’s College London. Curated by Cecile Bourne-Farrell and Professor Vivienne Jabri, the exhibition brought together three internationally renowned artists, Jananne Al-Ani, Baptist Coelho, and Shaun Gladwell to explore the relationship between war and the everyday.

Conflict and Injury Project (2023):

The Score (You and I Both Know)

The Score (You and I Both Know), an exhibition exploring the impact of war on populations living in the aftermath of conflict.

The free exhibition forms part of Conflict and Injury, a research project from the Department of War Studies investigating how war inflicts injuries on individuals, communities and their lived environments. The Score (You and I Both Know) is presented by Vivienne Jabri and King’s Culture, in collaboration with contemporary artist Corinne Silva and curator Cécile Bourne-Farrell.

About the exhibition

Silva draws on years of research and practice in Bosnia and Herzegovina to present this new series of works exploring the consequences of the Bosnian War on bodies, landscapes and memory, as well as the remarkable resilience and solidarity of those affected.

Through an installation of photographs and sound The Score (You and I Both Know) transports viewers to the siege of Sarajevo and the embodied, material and auditory cartography of violence. The deeply resonant exhibition is testimony to injury and resistance in the face of the deliberate targeting of civilian populations in time of war, capturing the scenes and sounds of lived experience during conflict and its aftermath.

Silva’s primary focus is a row of linden trees along the River Miljacka that mark Sarajevo’s former frontline; the only trees that remained in the city after the siege as their location was too dangerous for anyone to risk felling them. As well as being witnesses to the conflict, these trees were also active participants, forming a living shield to sniper fire. Today, their role is immortalised in their trunks and branches which bear the scars of the war. The works are complemented by a haunting voice singing a former Yugoslavian partisan song celebrating the forest as a place of safety.