The IR thinker

Published by the Brazilian Institute of International Relations since 1958, the Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional (Brazilian Journal of International Politics, also known as RBPI) has spent nearly seven decades serving as a vital bridge between Latin American scholarship and global debates on international affairs.

The journal has also reached several important milestones, including its transition to open access, the adoption of English as a publication language, and its integration into the SciELO digital publishing platform. These developments have significantly expanded its international reach and influence.

Editor-in-Chief: Haroldo Ramanzini Júnior
Impact Factor: 2025 (1.0) / 5-Year Impact Factor: 1.20
Indexed: Scopus / Web of Science
First Decision: 90 days
Acceptance Rate: 20%

Haroldo Ramanzini Júnior
Haroldo Ramanzini Júnior is a Brazilian political scientist specialising in Brazilian foreign policy, regionalism, and Latin American international relations, and serves as Associate Professor at the Institute of International Relations at the University of Brasília.

Content
00:00 Introduction
02:16 The Intellectual Identity of RBPI
04:46 What Makes RBPI Unique Among Latin American IR Journals?
10:31 Maintaining Thematic and Conceptual Coherence
12:49 Brazil's Foreign Policy, Latin America, and Global Perspectives
15:03 Emerging Intellectual Trends in Submissions
17:00 Which Research Topics Are Growing Most Rapidly?
19:08 Methodological Diversity in RBPI
21:35 The Most Common Mistakes in Submitted Manuscripts
24:33 Ensuring a High-Quality Editorial Process
27:29 Artificial Intelligence in Editorial Work and Peer Review
30:26 Editorial Innovations and Future Publishing Practices
35:49 Who Can Join the Editorial Board?
36:49 Should Authors Suggest Potential Reviewers?
39:25 Publishing in English and Internationalising the Journal
42:48 The Future Direction of RBPI
45:52 What Editorial Leadership Has Meant for Dr Ramanzini Junior's Career

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In 1989, an American cultural institute helped arrange Boris Yeltsin's first trip to the United States — and a single visit to a supermarket may have changed the course of Soviet history. Thus, what is the untold story of America's involvement in the transformation of the Soviet Union?

Daniel Satinsky
Daniel Satinsky is an independent scholar, retired attorney and retired business consultant. He began his career in the Soviet Union, then Russia, as part of a US-Russia telecom joint venture in 1991 and then continued with business and consulting projects in Russia up to 2014.

Publication
Creating the Post-Soviet Russian Market Economy: Through American Eyes

Over those years he traveled extensively across the country from Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Central Russia Golden Ring cities, the Urals and Siberia. Subsequently, he has been researching and writing about the interaction between Americans and Russians in this unique historical period.

After publishing his most recent book, Creating the Post Soviet Russian Market Economy: Through American Eyes, he has developed an oral history of interviews with foreigners active in Russia during the late 1980s through the early 2000s, available online as The Satinsky Archive, now including 55 in-depth interviews.

He was Chairman of the Board of the US Russia Chamber of Commerce of New England from 2000 – 2014 and currently is a Local Affiliate of the Davis Center at Harvard.

Content
00:00 Introduction
03:28 The Esalen Institute and Boris Yeltsin's Visit to the United States
21:02 SovAm Teleport: Establishing a Soviet–American Internet Connection
29:50 SP Dialog: American Technology and the Transformation of Soviet Banking
39:32 Project Harmony: Community Exchanges and American Police Officers in the Soviet Union
49:30 Russian Privatisation and the Role of American Companies
01:06:11 American Companies in Russia: Independent Ventures or Western Partnerships?
01:08:17 Investment Opportunities in the Post-Soviet Space
01:10:56 Radio Maximum, Cosmopolitan, and Western Cultural Influence in Russia
01:16:23 Sources, Evidence, and the Limits of Satinsky's Research

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After 9/11, the word "terrorism" replaced older colonial vocabularies — but the racial logic underneath stayed intact. Dr Somdeep Sen of Roskilde University joins The IR thinker to show how concepts such as development, security, and the War on Terror continue to sort the world along racial lines, even when race itself goes unnamed. From NATO's global colour line to China's reproduction of Western hierarchies within the Global South, this conversation maps the hidden architecture of race in contemporary IR.

Somdeep Sen
Dr Sen is Associate Professor in International Development Studies at Roskilde University, whose research explores race and racism in international relations, settler colonialism, liberation movements, and postcolonial theory.

Publications

Race (Chapter 9)

NATO and the global colour line

Decolonising to Reimagine International Relations

A Postcolonial Critique of EU-Middle East Relations

Race, Racism, and the Teaching of International Relations

Content
00:00 - Introduction
02:34 - How IR Erased Race — Deliberately and Systematically
07:09 - Why "sanitised" Language Still Encodes Racial Hierarchy
10:11 - Race Beyond the North–South Divide
15:15 - How Racial Logic Travels Across Regions and Contexts
19:02 - Terrorism, Security, and the Racialisation of Threat
28:15 - Western Imagination of the Middle East Before and After 9/11
34:21 - Why Race Scholarship From the Middle East Gets Overlooked
40:00 - Brexit, English Nationalism, and the Return of Racial Politics
45:32 - What Decolonising IR Actually Requires
47:59 - China as a Non-Western Power Reproducing Racial Hierarchies
51:10 - Intra-Southern Hierarchies and Who Gets to Speak for the Global South
53:41 - How to Research Race When Race Goes Unspoken
58:21 - Underresearched Areas and Future Directions

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Artificial intelligence is redrawing the boundaries of cybersecurity — accelerating attacks, complicating attribution, and compressing the time humans have to make decisions that matter.

In this episode, Myriam Dunn Cavelty of ETH Zurich examines AI-driven conflict, the politics behind critical infrastructure protection, the limits of European governance, and what it means when cyber war has no clear start and no clear finish.

Myriam Dunn Cavelty
Myriam Dunn Cavelty is a Senior Scientist at the Centre for Security Studies at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Her research examines the political and societal implications of digital technologies, with a particular focus on cyber security, cyber warfare, critical infrastructure protection, and technology governance. She also serves as co-editor-in-chief of Contemporary Security Policy.

Publications
The evolution of cyberconflict studies
The politics of cyber security
Cyber security politics: Socio-technological transformations and political fragmentation
Cybersecurity in Switzerland
Cyber-security and threat politics: US efforts to secure the information age

Recommended article:
Cyber War Will Not Take Place

Content
00:00 - Introduction
01:55 - What Actually Counts as Critical Infrastructure in the Age of AI?
07:58 - ENISA: Europe's Cybersecurity Watchdog — Triumphs, Failures, and Missed Opportunities
13:00 - Does the World Need a Global Cybersecurity Regulator?
14:43 - Hacked Nations: Geopolitical Coercion, Hybrid Warfare, and Strategic Signalling
25:48 - Is Cybersecurity a Political Problem Dressed Up as a Technical One?
32:31 - War Without End: Why AI-Driven Conflict Has No Clear Start, No Clear Finish
38:27 - Who Did It? The Dangerous Art of Attribution in Cyber Warfare
43:58 - The Speed Problem: When AI Makes Decisions Faster Than Humans Can Think
48:33 - Arming the Enemy: What Happens When Open-Source AI Falls Into the Wrong Hands?
52:00 - Measuring the Unmeasurable: How Do You Rank a Country's Cyber Power?
58:27 - The Blind Spots of AI Cybersecurity Research Topics

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Today, it is a real pleasure to speak with Professor Jonathan Fisher, co-editor of African Affairs — one of the leading journals in the field of African Studies. African Affairs is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the London-based Royal African Society.

It was established as the Journal of the African Society in 1901, then it was published as the Journal of the Royal African Society from 1936 until it obtained its current name in 1944.

The journal is broadly interdisciplinary, with a primary focus on the politics and international relations of sub-Saharan Africa, though it also draws on sociology, anthropology, economics, history, literature, and the arts where these illuminate debates on contemporary Africa.

Co-Editors
George M. Bob-Milliar
Jonathan Fisher
Amanda Lea Robinson
Gabrielle Lynch

Impact Factor: 2.2 / 5-Year Impact Factor: 2.7
Indexed: Scopus / Web of Science

Jonathan Fisher

Jonathan Fisher is Professor of Global Security at the University of Birmingham where he also serves as Deputy Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer for the College of Social Sciences.

His research centres on the role of ideas and legitimacy within authoritarian systems, with extensive fieldwork across eastern Africa, where his work has examined how guerrilla heritage shapes contemporary governance, conflict, and cooperation, as well as the growing phenomenon of digital authoritarianism.

Content
00:00 Introduction
01:41 The Journal’s Evolving Mission and Research Identity
08:00 Balancing Intellectual Coherence with Disciplinary Diversity
11:19 The Place of Empirical and Theoretical Research in Submissions
13:03 Emerging Trends in Manuscripts and Desired Research Directions
16:27 Underexplored Regions and Research Gaps across Africa
18:40 Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed-Methods Approaches in Publication
24:04 The Most Frequent Mistakes in Article Submissions
25:49 Common Pitfalls for Early-Career Researchers
27:26 Structural and Technical Weaknesses in Academic Articles
29:00 The Impact of AI on Editorial and Peer-Review Processes
31:30 Editorial Reforms and the Journal’s Growing Academic Standing
33:46 The Role and Significance of the Editorial Board
37:14 Supporting Marginalised and Underrepresented Scholars
40:37 Contributions from Latin America, Asia, and China
41:57 Does the Journal Encourage Authors to Suggest Reviewers?
42:43 Future Vision, Priorities, and Strategic Goals of the Journal

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