ProfessorJames Der Derian

James Der Derian is Michael Hintze Chair of International Security Studies and Director of the Centre for International Security Studies. HIs research and teaching interests are in international security, information technology, international theory, and documentary film.

He is author most recently of Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network (Routledge, 2nd ed., 2009) and Critical Practices in International Theory (Routledge, 2009), and co-editor with Alexander Wendt of Quantum International Relations:  A Human Science for World Politics (Oxford University Press, 2022). He is also author of On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement and Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed, and War; editor of International Theory: Critical Investigations and The Virilio Reader; and co-editor with Michael Shapiro of International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics and with Costas Constantinou of Sustainable DiplomaciesHis articles on international relations have appeared in the Review of International Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, International Affairs, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Harvard International Review, Millennium, Alternatives, Cultural Values, Samtiden and Global Perspectives. His articles on war, technology, and the media have appeared in the New York Times, Nation, Washington Quarterly, Global Agenda, The Conversation and Wired. 

He has made three film documentaries with Udris Film: Virtual Y2K, After 9/11, and most recently, Human Terrain: War Becomes Academic, which won the Audience Award at the 2009 Festival dei Popoli in Florence and was an official selection at numerous international film festivals. Project Z: The Final Global Event (with Phillip Gara) premiered at the 2012 DOK Leipzig Film Festival, and his most recent documentary, Project Q: War, Peace and Quantum Mechanics premiered at the 2024 Melbourne Doucumentary Film Festival.

He has produced two international art exhibitions, 9/11+1: The Perplexities of Security (2002) with Thomas Y. Levin, and The Power and Pathology of Networks (2004) with Franziska Nori. 

He has been a visiting scholar at MIT, Harvard, Oxford, McGill, Copenhagen, PRIO, USC, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and the American Academey in Berlin.

Der Derian recieved a Joint First Class Honours in Political Science and History at McGill University and a M.Phil. and D.Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar.