Happy holidays! It has been a busy year professionally and personally; given my recurring failure to write Christmas cards or a holiday letter, ever, I will share here a few highlights from 2024 and hopes/plans for 2025.
In the major bit of professional news this year, I was promoted to Professor at the University of Warwick’s Department of Politics and International Studies. Coming after seven years at Warwick, it was a great honor to receive this recognition from my colleagues and the university. I do miss the confusion caused by telling my US-based counterparts that I was a “Reader” of International Relations…but it simplifies the matter of translating my title quite a bit.
In terms of publications, it was great to see the efforts of several collaborations make their way through the long process of research, (re)writing, peer-review, and editing. I spent most of the year working collaboratively, and that has been a pleasure. Most of the things that came out in 2024 were years in the making. Several are products of my ongoing AHRC-funded research with Carsten-Andreas Schulz on Latin America and the formation of international order. The biggest highlight was making my debut in the flagship journal for political science, the American Political Science Review, with an examination of how Mexican Liberals shaped their own anti-imperial liberal internationalism in response to the French Intervention (1861-67).
In addition to those pieces with Carsten, I returned to collaborating with American University PhD alum and friend Sebastián Bitar, and finally saw a piece published with Warwick historian and my running partner Benjamin T. Smith. Ben and I first started discussing that paper while jogging down the canal paths during our government-approved pandemic exercise hour. That it came out in top-shelf history journal Past & Present was icing on the cake. Finally, a translated edition of an collaborative volume with Eric Hershberg was published in Spanish with El Colegio de México. That really served as the culmination of the Robert A. Pastor North American Research Initiative, which I’d chaired for about eight years. Given the more intense interest in North America in Mexico, we were very pleased to see this come to fruition with a prominent Mexican press. (The English version was published by University of New Mexico Press in December 2023.) Visual round-up below, and links after that.
- Long, Tom, “Treinta años: caminos, utopías y distopías,” Nexos
- Bitar, Sebastián and Tom Long, “Del consenso a la complejidad: relaciones interamericanas diversas y en transición,” Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals 136, pp. 35-62
- Long, Tom and Carsten-Andreas Schulz, “A turn against empire: Benito Juárez’s liberal rejoinder to the French intervention in Mexico,” American Political Science Review
- Long, Tom and Carsten-Andreas Schulz, “In the interstices of asymmetry: two centuries of US-Latin American relations,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs 25(1)
- Long, Tom and Benjamin T Smith, “State, crime and violence in Mexico, 1920–2000: Arbiters of impunity, agents of coercion,” Past & Present
Travel and talks
In addition to writing and teaching, I was lucky to visit and meet colleagues from the UK, Europe, and across the Americas to share work and swap ideas. I started 2024 with a trip back to my alma mater, American University, for the presentation of our book, North America Regionalism. It was also a fitting and moving tribute to our friend and my PhD supervisor, Robert Pastor, ten years after his passing.
In April, I visited San Francisco for the annual International Studies Association conference, always a wonderful opportunity to catch up with old friends, renew connections, and meet new and interesting folks. April was a busy month; Carsten and I also presented a new paper on the 1884-85 Berlin Conference and Latin America at the Oxford University Latin America Centre. I presented new iterations of that paper at the UK Latin American Historians Network meeting at Sheffield University and at a global diplomatic history workshop at Warwick in May.
Also in May, I caught the Eurostar through the channel tunnel for a trip to Paris, where I had the opportunity to make my first visit to the Maison de l’Amérique latine, discussing US relations with Latin America, in May. It was a great daylong discussion with largely French diplomats and scholars.
In July, I had the chance to get back to Buenos Aires for the first time since the pandemic. It’s one of my favorite cities anywhere, with tremendouse theater, arts, and literary scenes–not to mention some of the world’s most fascinating politics. I spent a lot of time trawling the foreign ministry archives, but I also had the chance to present my work in progress at FLACSO and to see brilliant friends and colleagues. After a break in Spain during August, it was back to teaching at Warwick for the fall term. Amidst that, I had the opportunity to join a postdoctoral development workshop at William & Mary in November, while also presenting Carsten and my book-in-progress at London’s Westminster University and at W&M in the same busy week.
Plans for 2025
The year to come promises to be a busy one, even as I try to focus on doing fewer but bigger projects. Carsten and I have a full joint agenda, starting with shepherding a few articles with R&Rs through the review process. We’re also working on getting a contract for our book-in-progress … hopefully news to come in the first months of 2025. And I’m also applying to an ERC Consolidator grant–always a long-shot but hopefully one worth taking.
I’m looking forward to making my first trip to Norway to meet colleagues at NUPI and present in their seminar series. There are many luminaries of historical International Relations there, as well as experts on small states, so it is a visit that I am really looking forward to.
In early March, I’ll be at the annual International Studies Association conference in Chicago. Carsten and I have co-organized a workshop and series of panels on how ideas and practices of international politics have moved from the Latin American region to the global level. We’re excited to be working with a diverse group of scholars on that theme. I will also be participating in roundtables on grand strategy and territorial conflict, and on liberalism beyond the west.
Hopefully, I’ll make it back to Mexico in April–I got sick and missed a long-awaited trip to Guadalajara in December. Plans for the second half of the year are still pretty much wide open…other than setting aside plenty of time for writing a book!
That’s my work-life year in review. Wishing you a very happy 2025!
Tom Long, PhD 