MIRTH – Monday International Relations Thought Series

On Monday afternoons during the academic year, IIS hosts a colloquium centered around contemporary research in International Relations. At the majority of MIRTH seminars,  an external speaker presents and receives feedback on new research, bringing a steady stream of fresh ideas to campus and providing an opportunity for graduate students across cohorts, departments, and other nearby universities to engage with research-in-progress. For students and faculty with research interests in International Relations, the workshop represents the intellectual heart of the community.  It also provides an important forum for PhD students to practice their job talks while they are on the academic job market and provides a venue for faculty and advanced graduate students to share work with one another.  External speakers and faculty are encouraged to present early work rather than research that is published or nearly so.  Feedback tends to be both plentiful and constructive. MIRTH also hosts professional development workshops for graduate students over the course of the semester, and participating graduate students rotate as formal discussants for external speakers. 

Berkeley has long held an speaker series in International Relations, with visiting speakers presenting a few times a semester in 223 Moses Hall since at least the early 1970s, an endeavor that was organized jointly with Stanford Political Science.  In the mid-1980s, after Bay Area traffic got worse, Professor Vinnie Aggarwal changed the IR colloquium to a Berkeley-only affair, which he ran jointly with Professor Steve Weber.  In Spring 2009, Professor Ron Hassner took it over, and turned it into a weekly seminar series.  It was named by one of the PhD student participants, Jay Purcell, as "Monday International Relations THing," but other faculty coordinators have since referred to it as "Monday International Relations THeory" and the full name of the workshop continues to provoke spirited debate.

Individuals wishing to sign up for the MIRTH mailing list and receive notifications of upcoming talks should contact the PhD student coordinator. Past rosters of speakers are listed below. 

2023-2024 Faculty Coordinator: Marika Landau-Wells

2023-2024 PhD Student Coordinator: Julia Raven

Although a long list of faculty across campus participate from time to time, the regular faculty participants include: Vinnie Aggarwal, Ryan Brutger, Ron Hassner, Susan Hyde, Marika Landau-Wells, Aila Matanock, and Michaela Mattes.  

Time and Location

MIRTH meets on Monday afternoons in 233 Philosophy Hall

Spring 2023 Schedule

DateMeeting
1/22/24Welcome Back Meeting
1/29/24Rose McDermott (Brown)
2/5/24Brad Leveck (UC Merced)
2/12/24Swati Srivastava (Purdue)
2/19/24President's Day - No Meeting
2/26/24Josh Kertzer (Harvard)
3/4/24Allison Carnegie (Columbia)
3/11/24Internal Meeting
3/18/24Steven Liao (UC Riverside)
3/25/24Spring Break - No Meeting
4/1/24Kai Thaler (UC Santa Barbara)
4/8/24Philip Cunliffe (UC College London)
4/15/24Jennie Barker (UC Berkeley)
4/22/24Lauren Barden-Hair (UC Berkeley)

Past Events

Fall 2023

Augst 28
Scott Gates

September 18
Marika Landau-Wells 

September 25Ishana Ratan

October 2
Ryan Brutger

October 9
Francis Gavin

October 16
Naima Green-Riley

October 23
Oren samet & Melvyn Leffler

October 30
Jackie Schneider

November 6
Julia Raven

November 13
Wendy Wong

Spring 2023

January 18
Stephanie Walter (U. of Zurich) 

January 23
Welcome Back

January 30
Ken Schultz (Stanford)

February 6
In Song Kim

February 13 
Marika Laundau-Wells (UC Berkeley)

February 20 
Holiday

February 27
Paasha Mahdavi (UC Santa Barbara)

March 6
Erik Lin-Greenberg (MIT)

March 13
Chagai Weiss (Stanford)

March 20
Ishana Ratan

March 27
Spring Break

April 3
Julia Raven

April 10
Andrew Blinkinsop

April 17
Meg Guliford (Drexel)

April 24
Oren Samet

Fall 2022

August 28
Introductory Meeting 

September 5
Holiday - No Meeting

September 12 
Alex Stephenson 

September 19
Allison Grossman

September 26
Tara Chandra 

October 3 
Biz Herman 

October 10 
Megumi Naoi

October 17
Thomas Zeitzoff

October 24 
Blair Welsh

October 31
Anna Minasyan

November 7
Department Talk

November 14
Department Talk

November 21 
Thanksgiving Week- No Meeting

November 28
Page Fortna

Spring 2022

January 24
Kickoff 

February 7
Kelebogile Zvobgo (College of William and Mary)

February 14
Suparna Chaudhry (Lewis and Clark College)

February 21
No Meeting (Presidents' Day)

February 28
Ryan Brutger (UC Berkeley)

March 7
Carly Wayne (Washington University in St. Louis)

March 14
Christina Schneider (UC San Diego)

March 21
No Meeting (Spring Break)

March 28
Page Fortna (Columbia University)

April 4
Michael Joseph (UC San Diego)

April 11
Shelley Liu (UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy)

April 18
Erin Lin (Ohio State University)

April 25
Layna Mosley (Princeton University)

Fall 2021

August 30
Kickoff 

September 6
No MIRTH - Labor Day

September 13
Edmund Malesky (Duke University)

September 20
Practice Job Talk
Biz Herman (University of California, Berkeley)

September 27
Practice Job Talk
Katherine Beall (University of California, Berkeley)

October 4
Practice Job Talk
Alex Stephenson (University of California, Berkeley)

October 11
Brandon Kinne (University of California, Davis)

October 18
Kennet Scheve (Yale University)

October 25
Roselyn Hsueh (Temple University)

November 1
Genevieve Bates (University of British Columbia)

November 8
Erin Lockwood (University of California, Irvine)

November 15
Mark Crescenzi (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

November 22
No MIRTH- Thanksgiving Week 

November 29
Tyler Pratt (Yale University)

Fall 2020

August 31
Kickoff & IR Group Discussion

September 7
No MIRTH - Labor Day

September 14
Jacob Shapiro (Princeton University)

September 21
Practice Job Talk
Katherine Beall (University of California, Berkeley)

September 28
Practice Job Talk
Elizabeth Herman (University of California, Berkeley)

October 5
Practice Job Talk
Caroline Brandt (University of California, Berkeley)

October 12
Mark Bell (University of Minnesota)

October 26
Jakana Thomas (Michigan State University)

November 2
IR Group Discussion / Workshop

November 9
Robert Jervis (Columbia University)

November 16
Catherline Worsnop (University of Maryland)

November 23
No MIRTH - Thanksgiving Week

November 30
Leonardo Baccini (McGill University)