Roland Bleiker

Roland is Professor of International Relations and Coordinator of the Visual Politics Research Program. His research explores how images and emotions shape political phenomena, including humanitarianism, security, peacebuilding, protest movements and the conflict in Korea. Books include Visual Global Politics (Routledge, 2018); Aesthetics and World Politics (Palgrave, 2009/2012); Divided Korea: Toward a Culture of Reconciliation (University of Minnesota Press, 2005/2008) and Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics (CUP, 2000). Roland's main current research project is an interdisciplinary ARC Linkage collaboration (2022-2026) on The Politics and Ethics of Visualising Humanitarian Crises. The project involves eight researchers and the World Press Photo Foundation, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Australian Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières. Roland grew up in Zürich, Switzerland, where he was educated and worked as a lawyer. He studied international relations in Paris, Seoul, Toronto, Vancouver and Canberra. Roland also worked for two years in a Swiss diplomatic mission in the Korean DMZ and held visiting affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt, Tampere, Yonsei and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Further informatin can be found on Roland's personal website: For an in-person or zoom appointment book here: https://calendly.com/bleiker International Relations: Visual Politics and Emotions: Theories of International Relations. How images and emotions shape political phenomena, including security, diplomacy and humanitarian crises. Peace and Conflict Studies: Conflict resolution in societies divided by trauma. Transnational social movements and the conceptualisation of political change. Art and literature as sources of political transformation. Politics and Security in Korea: Security and reconciliation on the Korean peninsula, including policy-relevant debates.

[2026] Ritual, emotion, and change in world politics. Hutchison, Emma and Bleiker, Roland (2026). Ritual, emotion, and change in world politics. International Theory, 1-33. doi: 10.1017/S175297192610030X [2026] How does it feel to live with kidney disease?. Bleiker, Roland, Endre, Zoltan and Harman, Sophie (2026). How does it feel to live with kidney disease?. The Lancet, 407 (10539), 1592-1593. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(26)00764-6 [2026] What does ethical imagery look like? An experimental examination of potential donor perceptions of nonprofit marketing imagery. Smith, Aimee E., Chapman, Cassandra M., Hornsey, Matthew J., Spence, Jessica L., Bleiker, Roland and Hutchison, Emma (2026). What does ethical imagery look like? An experimental examination of potential donor perceptions of nonprof