Jonathan Agensky

Jonathan Agensky, portrait in front of bookshelves
Associate Professor & Director of War and Peace Studies
Bentley Annex 211
International Development Studies
War and Peace Studies

Jonathan Agensky is the Director of the War and Peace Studies program at the Center for International Studies and an Associate Professor in Political Science at Ohio University.

Education

Ph.D., University of Cambridge, 2014

Research Areas

  • Religion, world politics, and global governance
  • Humanitarianism and international development
  • Historical sociology, IR theory, social and political theory
  • African and postcolonial studies

Courses Taught

  • POLS 2500: International Relations
  • POLS 3520: International Peace
  • POLS 4765/5765: Postcolonial Politics
  • POLS 4904/5904: Global Humanitarianism

Ohio University Affiliations

Center for International Studies

African Studies

War and Peace Program and Theme

Humanitarianism Program

About Dr. Agensky

Jonathan Agensky is the Director of the War and Peace Studies program at the Center for International Studies and an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Political Science at Ohio University. He holds a Ph.D. in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge and was a post-doctoral fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science in both the departments of International Relations (2014-16) and International Development Studies (2013-14). In 2011-12, he was an International Fox Fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University.

Dr. Agensky’s research is broadly situated within interpretive IR, drawing on international historical sociology, postcolonial/African studies, and social and political theory. Examining the social dimensions of security, relief, and development, his research addresses contemporary and historical intersections of religion and international political order and the importance of non-state actors for managing contemporary episodes of crisis. Dr. Agensky’s regional interests cover the Anglo-Atlantic world and sub-Saharan Africa, especially South Sudan. His in-progress book, “Aid, Advocacy, and Global Christendom: The Politics of Christian Humanitarianism in South Sudan,” conducts an in-depth historical case study of how Christian groups of the global North involved themselves in the international politics of Sudan’s second civil war (1983-2005) and South Sudan’s subsequent 2011 independence.

Dr. Agensky joined Ohio University in 2016. He has conducted fieldwork in the United States, United Kingdom, Kenya, and South Sudan and has lived and worked in Toronto, Cambridge, London, and Washington, D.C. His research has been published in European Journal of International Relations, Global Society, and Globalisations.