DPIR Professors win prestigious APSA awards for their research

Congratulations to DPIR Professors Patricia Owens and Robin Harding, who have both won top awards from the American Political Science Association (APSA) for their work. 

Professor of International Relations Patricia Owens received the International History and Politics Section Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Best Book Award for her tome Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men (Princeton, 2025)

In the book – which has already won three other awards – Professor Owens argues that women were central to the development of international relations as an academic discipline, but their intellectual contributions were later marginalised and largely written out of its history. 

Using archival research, Patricia Owens shows how gender and racial inequalities shaped the field’s foundations and calls for a rethinking of its past to help renew its future.

Professor Owens said: “It is especially meaningful for me to receive the Jervis and Schroeder Best Book Award from APSA because the prize sits at the meeting point of historical scholarship and international politics, and because so many past winners and judges are historians; for a book about the importance of history to be recognised in this way is lovely.”

Meanwhile Professor Harding was awarded APSA’s David Brian Robertson Prize of the Politics and History Section for his co-authored paper ‘Putting Property Rights in Context: Colonial Cotton Concessions, Customary Land Tenure, and Development in Mozambique.’

The paper was co-authored with Tugba Bozçağa (KCL) and Arinze Nwokolo (Lagos Business School) and concludes that areas of Mozambique affected by Portugal’s colonial cotton farming system tend to have worse outcomes today, including lower levels of education, health, wealth, and access to basic services. 

The authors argue that the system weakened traditional local leadership by promoting private land ownership, making it harder for communities to organise and support long-term development.

Professor Harding said: “My co-authors and I are delighted and honoured to have our work recognised by this award. 

"This paper is the starting point for a broader research agenda evaluating the developmental legacies of different forms of colonial state revenue generation in Africa. 

"To have the quality and contribution of our work acknowledged at this stage gives us huge encouragement as we take this agenda forward." 

This year’s awardees will be honoured at the 2026 APSA Awards Reception in Boston, MA this September.