Dr George Kyris

Dr George Kyris

Department of Political Science and International Studies
Associate Professor in International Politics

Contact details

Address
Department of Political Science and International Studies
School of Government
Muirhead Tower
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Qualifications

  • PhD in Politics, University of Manchester, 2011
  • MA in International Relations, University of Manchester, 2007
  • PG Certificate in Academic Practice/ Higher Education Academy Fellow (2018)

Biography


I joined the department of POLSIS in 2014 and in 2016 I was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship with a project on international organisations, conflict and sovereignty. Before, I was a Research Fellow at the LSE and taught at the Universities of Warwick and Manchester, where I completed my PhD in 2011.

Teaching

  • Conflict, Statehood and Sovereignty (PGT)
  • Approaches to Research on Government & Society (PGR)
  • International Relations Theory (Year 2)

Past:

  • War and Peace: Theory and Practice (Year 3)
  • Introduction to International Relations (Year 1)
  • Example of research-informed teaching:  'What Is Sovereignty? Lessons from the UK', piece co-authored by students of the module and Dr Kyris. 
  • Institutions, Politics and Policies of the European Union (Year 2)

Postgraduate supervision

I would welcome PhD applications in areas related to my research interests below, and I would encourage potential supervisees to get in touch:

- international conflict, conflict management and resolution
- international organisations, the European Union
- state recognition
- statehood, sovereignty
- secession
- unrecognised/ de facto states

Research

My research agenda lies at the intersection of International Relations theory, security and global governance. My expertise is on state recognition and international organisations, especially in the context of conflicts over statehood, unrecognised states, and the European Union. Emanating from this, I am also interested in state theory and sovereignty debates.

 

Selected Projects/ Awards:

UoB ESRC IAA supported project 'Protracted Conflict and Lessons for Security in Europe and Beyond' (with Nicholas Barker, 2022-2023): a set of knowledge exchange activities involving academics, think tanks and policy makers on the issue of Russia’s war against Ukraine and associated challenges to European and global security.

Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship (2017-2020):This programme explores the role of international organisations (such as the UN, EU, OSCE, AU or ASEAN) in statehood conflicts and in relation to state recognition. Methodologically, it combines the development of typologies of (a) recognition and (b) approaches of international organisations towards statehood claimants with more in-depth process tracing of the ways in which recognition influences the approaches of international organisations towards statehood conflict. The programme offers missing findings on collective recognition, its relation to the role of international organisations globally, and makes a contribution to a state-centric academic and policy discussion, as well as broader debates on sovereignty.

'Dealing with Conflict' University of Birmingham- PRIO Workshop (2018): Together with the Peace Research Institute Oslo and supported by the Internationalisation Fund of the School of Government, I organised a policy-engagement workshop in the Cyprus UN buffer zone, which invited local stakeholders, like the European Commission and the UN, to learn how to deal with the Cyprus conflict from academics working on similar conflicts. Building on the success of the event, more workshops were organised in other conflict-affected areas (Georgia 2018, Kosovo 2019)

'Sovereignties of Birmingham', Being Human Festival (2017): Worked with local communities and school on a set of public discussions and history walks on sovereignty and what it means to Birmingham, its people and landscape.

LSE Hellenic Observatory and Neapolis University Post-Doctoral Fellow (2013): The Fellowship built on my PhD research and expanded on the role of the EU in the Cyprus conflict and lessons that can be drawn for similar conflicts (e.g. Kosovo).

Other activities

  • co-founder (with Vera Axyonova) and chair of the ECPR Research Network Statehood, Sovereignty and Conflict'
  • Higher Education Academy Fellow
  • Member of: International Studies Association (ISA), the British International Studies Association (BISA), the Universities Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) and the European International Studies Association (EISA)
  • Reviewer for a range of publications, including Oxford University Press, Manchester University Press Palgrave MacMillan and a range of academic journals. 
  • In Birmingham, Dr Kyris has been co-convenor of the European Studies Research Group, a member of the Political Settlements research group and the International Relations and Security Theory research group.
  • Dr Kyris writes regularly for The Conversation and The Guardian.

Publications

Highlight publications

Kyris, G 2022, 'State recognition and dynamic sovereignty', European Journal of International Relations, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 287-311. https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221077441

Kyris, G 2015, The Europeanisation of Contested Statehood: The EU in Northern Cyprus. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315558479

Kyris, G & Luciano, B 2021, 'Collective recognition and regional parliaments: navigating statehood conflict', Global Studies Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 3, ksab011. https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksab011

Kyris, G 2018, 'Sovereignty and engagement without recognition: explaining the failure of conflict resolution in Cyprus', Ethnopolitics, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 426-442. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2018.1495364

Recent publications

Article

Kyris, G & Brisland, M 2024, 'International Society and Its Many Contestations: A Study of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization', Global Studies Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 2, ksae044. https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksae044

Kyris, G 2024, 'The Recognition of a Right to Statehood and Palestine', Ethnopolitics. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2024.2362510

Kyris, G 2018, 'The European Union in Northern Cyprus: conceptualising the avoidance of contested states', Geopolitics. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2018.1552945

Kyris, G & Bouris, D 2017, 'Europeanisation, Sovereignty and Contested States: the European Union in Palestine and northern Cyprus', British Journal of Politics and International Relations, vol. 19, no. 4. https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117727534

Kyris, G & Christou, G 2017, 'The impact of the Eurozone crisis on national foreign policy: enhancing Europeanisation in the case of Cyprus', Journal of Common Market Studies. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12557

Kyris, G 2015, 'Europeanization and ‘Internalized’ conflicts: the case of Cyprus', European Foreign Affairs Review, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 83-96. <http://www.kluwerlawonline.com/abstract.php?area=Journals&id=EERR2015006>

Kyris, G 2015, 'The Fifth Greek Presidency of the Council of the European Union: The Most Unlikely Captain?', Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 53, no. S1, pp. 75-82. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12268

Kyris, G 2014, 'A model of ‘contested’ Europeanization: The European Union and the Turkish-Cypriot administration', Comparative European Politics, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 160-183. https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2012.39

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Kyris, G 2022, International organizations and world politics. in RJ Huddleston, T Jamieson & P James (eds), Handbook of Research Methods in International Relations. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 152–166. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839101014.00018

Kyris, G 2021, Recognition and the European Union Statebuilding in Kosovo. in I Armakolas, A Demjaha, A Elbasani & S Schwandner-Sievers (eds), Local and international determinants of Kosovo’s statehood – Vol II. Kosovo Foundation for Open Society, pp. 273-300. <https://kfos.org/en/news/77/new-publication-local-and-international-determinants-vol-2>

Kyris, G 2019, Sovereignty and Engagement without Recognition. in J Ker-Lindsay & E Berg (eds), The Politics of International Interaction with De Facto States. Routledge.

Commissioned report

Kyris, G & Montoro, JM 2022, Kosovo’s Sports Diplomacy: Accessing the international, building the national. Kosovo Foundation for Open Society. <https://kfos.org/en/publications/130/kosovos-sports-diplomacy-accessing-international-building-national>

Bacigalupo, L & Kyris, G 2021, Statebuilding and Culture in Kosovo. Kosovo Foundation for Open Society. <https://kfos.org/en/publications/111/statebuilding-and-culture-kosovo>

Entry for encyclopedia/dictionary

Kyris, G 2020, International Organizations and Statehood Conflicts. in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave. <https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-030-11795-5_155-1>

Kyris, G 2020, Statehood Conflicts. in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave. <https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-030-11795-5_154-1>

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

  • International Conflict 
  • Territorial conflict
  • International organisations, particularly European Union politics
  • Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Kosovo, Palestine

Languages and other information

Media availability in spoken and written English and Greek.

Media experience

Dr Kyris has extensive media experience. He has been invited to comment for international and regional media, such as the BBC Website, Radio and TV on a variety of international and European issues, including conflict, the Eurozone crisis and the centenary of World War One. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian and the Conversation and has also written for policy platforms like LSE BlogsManchester Policy Blogs or the Greek Politics Specialist Group and for leading European news agencies, like Euractiv and EUObserver.

Policy experience

Dr Kyris' regularly engage with policy-makers. Examples of major recent activities include: 

- In 2018 and supported by the School of Government Internationalisation Fund, Dr Kyris co-organised with the Peace Research Institute Oslo a policy-engagement workshop in the Cyprus UN buffer zone (2018) on lessons for the Cyprus conflict. Building on the success of the event, more workshops were organised in other conflict-affected areas (Georgia 2018, Kosovo 2019).   

- In 2018, Dr Kyris took part in a University of Birmingham- OSCE Workshop on Security & Economic Connectivity and contributor to the OSCE report (2018)

In 2015, Dr Kyris' evidence was selected by the House of Lords EU External Affairs Sub-Committee.

In 2014, Dr Kyris' evidence was included in the UK Foreign Office Review of Balance of Competences, the 'most extensive analysis of EU action ever taken by a member state'.

Dr Kyris has also been a Country Expert for the Varieties of Democracy project, University of Gothenburg and has contributed to the European Council on Foreign Relations Scoreboard 2015.