Overlapping Scientific Communities: Internal Structuration and Knowledge Diffusion in International Relations (IR)

The aim of this project is to ascertain how the social structuration of multiple and overlapping International Relations (IR) communities affects the diffusion of knowledge within and among these communities. In particular, we want to analyze how the various communities relate to each other and to identify the mechanisms of knowledge diffusion within and between them. We contribute to the sociology of science by mapping and explaining the global diffusion of knowledge in one field of the social sciences for the first time. And we add empirical evidence to debates in International Relations about the alleged “Western” core. The project uses a multi-method design integrating data from multinational surveys of IR scholars, from journal content and citation analyses, as well as from CV analyses and semi-structured interviews. In particular, we go beyond Western-based IR scholarship and beyond data from the Web of Science to incorporate systematically work from the Global South enabling us to investigate the extent to which a truly global IR community exists.