Asha Herten-Crabb

Assistant Professor

Email:

Room: S0.42

Advice and Feedback Hours:

In person: Mondays 14.30 - 15.30 S0.42 Social Sciences, please book hereLink opens in a new window

Online: Fridays 13.30-14.30, please book here Link opens in a new window

Profile

I am Assistant Professor of International Organisations. I study how the legacies of Western European imperialism continue to shape global governance after formal decolonisation. My scholarship brings international political economy into conversation with critical international relations and historical sociology. It centres on trade governance and sustainable development, alongside public work on reparatory justice.

At the heart of this agenda is ontological political economy, a field of inquiry I am developing within international relations. It brings questions of being and relation into the study of the global political economy. I examine how ontological hierarchy is bound up with material dependence and the ordering of knowledge, and how these forms of power are reproduced through global governance negotiations.

My main empirical case is European Union trade policy, especially the EU–MERCOSUR negotiations. Through the agreement’s treatment of sustainable development and intellectual property, I examine the persistence of unequal relations and limited openings for resistance between Western Europe and the Southern Cone.

I co-founded and organise the Global Peoples’ Forum on the British Empire. The Forum creates space for public truth-telling about empire and supports work towards reparatory justice.

I completed my PhD in International Relations at the London School of Economics in 2024. Before entering academia, I worked at Chatham House, the Fiji Ministry of Health, the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy, and ActionAid.