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Simona Rentea, Ph.D.


Department of Political Science
International Relations

Education

Ph.D. University of Manchester, UK

Practice Areas

  • International Relations
  • Politics
  • Political Theology

Research Interests

Dr. Rentea conducts research in the field of International Relations. In particular, her interests address key questions in International Relations (IR) about the nature of the political, the relationship between the medieval and the modern, the possibility of moving beyond the Westphalian order, modalities of imagining the international and the global, the possibility of radical change within the system. She is also interested in political theology, the relationship between politics and science and liberal biopolitics. Continuing her broader interest in the “politics of imagination”, she has recently started a new project on alternative responses to the economic crisis for an elucidation of the imaginary of crisis, the construction of alternative modes of political and economic organization and re-thinking of the international/global/transversal in the practices of European anti-austerity and anti-precarity movements, particularly in Spain.

Publications and Media Placements

Books

(2015) The Ashgate Research Companion to Biopolitics (ed. with Sergei Prozorov), (London: Ashgate).
Journal Special Issues

(2011) “Politics of the Encounter: Law between Immanence and Transcendence”, Law & Critique, Vol. 22 (2) (with Stewart Motha and Andreja Zevnik): “Politics of the Encounter: Editorial Introduction” Law & Critique, Vol. 22 (2).

(2013) “The Power of Life’s Excess: contesting sovereignty from sites that do not exist”, Theory & Event, Vol. 16 (4) (with Andreja Zevnik and Erzsebet Strausz): “The Power of Life’s Excess: Editorial Introduction”, Theory & Event, Vol. 16 (4).

Book chapters

(2015) “The Biopolitical Dispositif of Liberalism” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Biopolitics, (London: Ashgate).

In preparation/progress

Beyond Westphalia? The Limits of Authority and the Political in International Relations Theory, Single-authored monograph.

“From the Katechontic to the Eschatological in Contemporary Liberal Biopolitics”, Contemporary Political Theory

“Authority and Imagination in the Post-Westphalian Era”, Journal of International Relations and Development.

“Becoming Common: Anxiety and Imagination in Anti-Austerity Movements in Spain”, Theory and Event.

Special Issue on The Rise of Podemos, Open Democracy.

Conference Papers and Invited Talks

(2014) Fourth Global International Studies Conference (WISC), Frankfurt, Germany: “The Political Theology of Liberalism”, 7 -9 August 2014.

(2014) Graduate School for International Affairs, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Lecture series: “IR Theory and the Demise of the Westphalian Order”, 1-15 June 2014 (invited).

(2014) Centre for Advanced International Theory: “Authority and Imagination in the Post-Westphalian Era”, 3 March 2014, University of Sussex, UK (invited).

(2014) Special Workshop Europe’s Common: Spaces of Action, Battles for Knowledge: “Precarious Imagination in Late Capitalism”, University of Manchester, 13—14 January 2014 (invited paper).

(2013) Eight Pan-European Conference on International Relations: “From the Katechontic to the Eschatological in Contemporary Liberal Biopolitics”, Warsaw, 18 – 21 September 2013 (paper presented as part of the Global Biopolitics Section, convened with Sergei Prozorov).

(2013) British International Studies Association Annual Conference, Roundtable organizer and participant: The IR Scholar as Public Intellectual, Birmingham, 20 – 21 June 2013.

(2012) International Conference The Powers of Life and Death: Biopolitics Beyond Foucault: “Abstract Life and the Manipulation of the Natural Frame in Contemporary Liberal Biopolitics”, University of Helsinki, 15- 16 November 2012 (invited paper).

(2012) BISA- ISA (International Studies Association) Conference: “Speaking Truth to Power in the Age of Science-based Policy“, Edinburgh, 22—24 June 2012.