School of Social and Political Science

Background

Benjamin is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations and Associate Director of the Europa Institute at the University of Edinburgh. His research examines the politics of foreign policy, with a focus on Brexit and European security. Benjamin is Editor of the Review of International Studies and Co-Editor of the Routledge/UACES book series on Contemporary European Politics. He has previously taught at the London School of Economics, University College London, Canterbury Christ Church University, and the University of Oxford.

Qualifications

DPhil in International Relations, University College, Oxford

MPhil in International Relations (with Distinction), St Antony's College, Oxford

MSc in International Relations Research (with Distinction), London School of Economics

BSc in Government, London School of Economics

Academic Articles

'Time on Our Side: Is Scottish Independence More Likely in the Future?'. Political Studies Review, Online First (with Jean-François Daoust and Alan Convery).

'A Debate of the Highest Order: The Brexit Referendum as Second-Order Role Contestation'. Foreign Policy Analysis, 20(3), July 2024 (with Adrian Rogstad).

'Foreign Policy as Compensation: Why Brexit Became a Foreign and Security Policy Issue'. International Studies Quarterly, 68(2), June 2024 (with Alexander Mesarovich).

'Trust and calculation in international negotiations: how trust was lost after Brexit'. International Affairs, 99(6), November 2023 (with Tobias Wille).

'Withdrawal Symptoms: Party Factions, Political Change and British Foreign Policy Post-Brexit'. Journal of European Public Policy, 30(11), November 2023.

'Negotiating secession: Brexit lessons for Scottish independence'. British Politics, 18(3), September 2023.

'With or Without EU: Differentiated Integration and the Politics of Post-Brexit EU-UK Security Collaboration'. European Papers, 7(3), February 2023 (with Monika Sus).

'Combined differentiation in European defense: tailoring Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) to strategic and political complexity'. Contemporary Security Policy, 44(1), January 2023 (with Carmen Gebhard).

'Prisoners of their own device: Brexit as a failed negotiating strategy'. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 24(4), September 2022.

'How to be Great (Britain)? Discourses of Greatness in the United Kingdom's Referendums on Europe'. European Review of International Studies, 9(2), August 2022 (with Adrian Rogstad).

'When politics trumps strategy: UK-EU security collaboration after Brexit'. International Political Science Review, 43(3), June 2022 (with Monika Sus).

'Unity over Diversity? The Politics of Differentiated Integration after Brexit'. Journal of European Integration, 43(8), December 2021.

'Bounded Rationality and the Brexit Negotiations: Why Britain Failed to Understand the EU'. Journal of European Public Policy, 28(12), December 2021 (with Filipa Figueira).

'Deal or no Deal: Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement and the Politics of (Non-)Ratification'. Journal of Common Market Studies, 59(6), November 2021.

'The Domestic Sources of Détente: State-Society Relations and Foreign Policy Change during the Cold War'. Foreign Policy Analysis, 17(2), April 2021 (with Angelos Chryssogelos).

'Negotiating Brexit: The Cultural Sources of British Hard Bargaining'. Journal of Common Market Studies, 59(2), March 2021 (with Uta Staiger).

'The Party Scene: New Directions for Political Party Research in Foreign Policy Analysis'. International Affairs, 97(2), March 2021 (with Stephanie Hofmann).

'Shadows of the Empire: Hard Brexit, Commonwealth Revival, and UK-Canada Relations'. Balsillie Papers, 3(3), November 2020.

'The 2019 European Parliament Election in the United Kingdom'. Italian Political Science Review, 50(3), November 2020.

'Great Expectations: The Brexit Moment in EU Security and Defence and the Return of the Capabilities-Expectations Gap'. Europe in the World: A Law Review, 3(1), December 2019 (with Monika Sus).

'The end of consensus? Folk theory and the politics of foreign policy in the Brexit referendum'. Global Affairs, 5(5), December 2019 (with Adrian Rogstad).

‘Centre of Gravity: Domestic Institutions and the Victory of Liberal Strategy in Cold War Europe’. Security Studies, 28(1), January 2019.

‘Post-Brexit EU/UK security cooperation: NATO, CSDP+ or French Connection?’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 20(4), September 2018 (with Monika Sus).

‘Over the threshold: the politics of foreign policy in majoritarian parliamentary systems—the case of Britain’. International Politics, 55(5), September 2018.

‘International ideologies: paradigms of ideological analysis and world politics’. Journal of Political Ideologies, 22(3), 2017.

Edited Volumes

Theory as Ideology in International Relations: The Politics of Knowledge. Routledge, 2020. (Editor, with Sebastian Schindler).

Brexit and Beyond: Rethinking the Futures of Europe. UCL Press, 2018. (Editor, with Uta Staiger).