Skip to main content
IHSS

The Primacy of Movement: a discussion with Professor Jef Huysmans

When: Tuesday, January 25, 2022, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Where: Online

Speaker: Professor Jef Huysmans, Queen Mary University of London

In this seminar, hosted by the programme Mobile People: Mobility as a way of life, Professor Jef Huysmans has discussed the paper “Digitalising the Virtual: Movement and Relations in Drone Warfare” by Srishti Malaviya (JNU) published by Millennium: Journal of International Relations in 2020.  

The paper discusses the notion of the virtual understood as the “indeterminate potential of movement which moves bodies and relations” and how drone strikes intervene violently in the assembling of relations on the ground, interrupting them entirely. The paper as such contributes to wider discussions on post-humanism, relational ontologies and in particular the centring of movement as a dimension for critical thought.   

Jef Huysmans is Professor of International Politics in Queen Mary University of London.  

He is best known for his work on the politics of insecurity, the securitization of migration, critical methods in security studies and IR, and an International Political Sociology of fracturing worlds. Currently he is working on security and democracy, the impact of giving conceptual primacy to movement in social sciences, and a post-critical international political sociology of fracturing worlds. 

Anna Fuiniguerra chaired the seminar.

Back to top