Dr Alexandros Koutsoukis

Alexandros has published on U.S. foreign policy and the war in Afghanistan, Clausewitz, Thucydides, national-populism and Brexit, and the role of debates and role-playing in teaching.

Alexandros received his PhD degree doing research on one of the fathers of International Relations, Thucydides, from Aberystwyth University, the birthplace of modern International Relations. His topic was on the Peloponnesian War, war termination and political realism. He subsequently completed post-doctoral research on the role of symbols in world politics as research assistant to Professor Andrew Linklater at Aberystwyth. He is currently editing and contributing to the Palgrave Handbook for International Political Theory (with David Boucher, David Reidy, Peter Sutch, Howard Williams). He is also editing, with Professor Linklater, a forum on the contributions of Norbert Elias in IR in the hope that more people will find Elias's processual way of thinking helpful and intuitive about the problems of our time (e.g., Covid-19, war, refugee crisis, ecological crisis, animal suffering). He is in the process of revising an article on Brexit from a process sociological perspective, and transforming his PhD thesis into his first monograph on the topic of Thucydides and war termination.

His teaching experience is wide-ranging, long-standing and acclaimed. He started teaching in 2012, during his PhD studies, continued during his post-doc (2018-19), and has expanded his portfolio during his lectureships at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan, 2019-2020), University of East Anglia (2020-2021), and UCLan (2021-present). He has taught at various educational levels including foundation, undergraduate and post-graduate levels. His teaching has also benefitted from his experience as group leader, participant, and staff member in the Summer Schools of the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Relations (2009-2014). During his teaching he has been using innovative forms of pedagogy like debates with role play, simulations, film reviewing, and art analysis. He has also utilised new technologies like Blackboard and social media to make teaching more interactive and student-centric. His next project is to expand his use of art in teaching IR to help students’ learning experience become more engaging, stimulating and enjoyable.

He has previously served as research assistant to the late Professor Kouskouvelis of the University of Macedonia (Greece) on Turkish foreign policy, and on the history of the Greek literature on IR. Alexandros had the chance to work with Prof. Kouskouvelis both during his BA and MA studies. Professor Kouskouvelis has been an inspiring figure that helped Alexandros grow his interest in Thucydides. Alexandros has also served as editorial assistant and senior editorial assistant for the premier journal in Kantian studies, Kantian Review (2014-2021) and as editor for IR theory at one of the most visited open-source websites on IR, E-International Relations (2014-2020).

He is encouraging of students’ extra-curricular activities, and has been an adamant supporter of the newly-formed Model United Nations (MUN) Society at UCLan. He is looking forward to the forthcoming first MUN Conference organised by the MUN Society and the new BA in IR at UCLan. He hopes that this will become a yearly tradition that will allow students to have more fun during their studies, while building up their CV and employability skills (e.g., public speaking, team work, leadership).

Once a month you will find him engaging in one of his favourite pastimes, poetry, participating in a poetry circle in Preston. He adores spending time in the outdoors with an energetic Border Collie called Woedy. When it’s time to relax, his grandmother’s unsurpassable cooking skills remain his North Star for cooking his favourite traditional Greek recipes such as “soutzoukakia”, “gemista” and “papoutsakia”.