In a recent article, Maria Eriksson Baaz and Swati Parashar1 trace the continued salience of Eurocentrism in critical International Relations (IR), demonstrating how the ‘master’s outlook’ continues to stifle the study of global politics; they ultimately encourage an unsettling and even implosion of the discipline. Starting from this proposed ‘implosion’ of critical IR, this article reflects on our hopes, as two current PhD candidates and one early career researcher in global politics, for teaching and learning in this future world. We begin by reflecting on our own complicity in reproducing the Western-centrism of the discipline and consider how this discomfort can be used productively. The article then considers the radical potential of the classroom and the necessity of empathetic, collaborative inquiry to the future of the discipline of global politics. We advocate for an IR which is imaginative, relational, messy, and vulnerable – and are hopeful about how this may animate a meaningful and sustainable implosion. Embracing our discomfort and the possibility of failure, we hope to contribute to the ongoing ‘unsettling’ of academia from the standpoint of incipient feminist scholars and hopeful early-career teachers.

Recent world events, such as the rise of hypermasculine authoritarian leaders, have shown the importance of both sex and gender for understanding international politics. However, quantitative researchers of conflict have long relegated the study of sex and gender inequality as a cause of war to a specialized group of scholars, despite overwhelming evidence that the connections are profound and consequential. In this review essay, we demonstrate the tremendous progress made in this field by analyzing a wave of research that examines the relationships between sex and gender inequality and war. We divide this work into theories that emphasize strategy versus those that analyze structures. In addition, we focus on two aspects of this research agenda—specifying mechanisms that link sex and gender inequality to war, and leveraging data at multiple levels of analysis—to outline fruitful pathways forward for the broader international security research agenda. Ultimately, we argue that the study of the nexus of sex and gender inequality and war will enliven theoretical debates, illuminate new hypotheses, and enrich the policy discourse with robust evidence.