Forum: Dead-Ends, Disasters, Delays? Reflecting on Research Failure in International Studies and Ways to Avoid It

This forum urges international relations (IR) practitioners to rethink the nature of both failure and success, and their own responsibility in building an academy that enables scholars of all backgrounds to thrive. Reflecting on their own experiences, the contributors detail factors that commonly stymie promising work in IR. These range from the quotidian—rejections during peer review and frustrations around network-building—to more serious impediments, including the growing neoliberalization of the academy, employment precarity, illness and disability, and limits on academic freedom. The forum offers four central insights: First, we must recognize the difference between constructive and non-constructive research failure and create greater space for the former. Second, we must work harder to identify and address those contributors to research failure that should not be tolerated. This includes a recognition of privilege and positionality and an understanding of failure as fundamentally situational. Concurrently, third, we must also resist narratives that fetishize meritocracy and individual resilience, and render invisible structural barriers to success. Finally, we must better distinguish researcher failure from research failure. The barriers that slow or foreclose promising research harm not only our intellectual community but also our discipline, limiting its potential to address the most significant challenges of the present moment.