Dr Joshua Baker

Dr Joshua Baker joined the School of History Politics and International Relations as Lecturer in International Relations in September 2017. Previously he was a Teaching Fellow in International Relations also at Leicester.

Joshua completed his ESRC funded PhD in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham in 2017. While at Birmingham he was affiliated with the Institute for Conflict Cooperation and Security. During his PhD Joshua held visiting positions at the MIT Centre of International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology and at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo where he was a Stanton Fellow.

My primary research interests explore how multi-disciplinary research on trust empathy and emotions can contribute to understanding various forms of conflict and cooperation in international politics. The empirical focus of this been on US foreign policy the Iran nuclear negotiations and more generally issues relating to nuclear weapons and non-proliferation.

I am currently engaged in two research projects. The first explores the role of empathy in the de-escalation of conflicts and specifically in the negotiations that led to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The first output of this is an article titled ‘The empathic foundations of security dilemma de-escalation’ published in Political Psychology.

The second project (with Matias Spektor) is concerned with the status politics of emerging powers. Specifically it explores the status aspirations of Brazil and Turkey through their efforts to mediate the Iran nuclear dispute in 2009-2010 and the subsequent status denial by the United States who rejected the fruits of Brazil and Turkey’s efforts.

Baker J (2019) ‘The empathic foundations of security dilemma de-escalation’ Political Psychology 40 (6) pp.1251-1266

‘Trust or verification? Accepting vulnerability in the making of the INF Treaty’ in Kilme M. Kreis R. and Ostermann C. (eds.) Trust but Verify”: The Politics of Uncertainty and Transformation of the Cold War Order (Stanford University Press 2016) (with Nicholas Wheeler and Laura Considine)

‘Iran Nuclear Deal is Built on Trust as well as Verification’ Birmingham Brief (2015) (with Nicholas Wheeler)

PL1022 Key Concepts in International Relations

PL2022 Foreign Policy Analysis (module convenor)

PL3147 Emotions in Conflict and Cooperation (module convenor)

PL7161 Post-Cold War World Order (module convenor)