Prof Toni Erskine

BA (Hons) in Political Science (First Class), University of British Columbia; MSc in Social and Political Theory (with Distinction), University of Edinburgh; PhD, University of Cambridge

Toni Erskine is Director of the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs and Professor of International Politics at The Australian National University (ANU). She is also Editor of the journal International Theory: A Journal of International Politics, Law, and Philosophy and Associate Fellow of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge University. She currently serves as Academic Lead for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP)/APRU ‘AI for the Social Good: Strengthening Capabilities and Government Frameworks in Asia and the Pacific’ Research Project and in this role works closely with government departments in Thailand and Bangladesh. She is also Chief Investigator and a Founding Member of the ANU ‘Humanising Machine Intelligence’ Grand Challenge Research Project. She was recently awarded a research grant from the Australian Department of Defence for a two-year (2023–2025) project on AI, Automated Systems, and Future Use-of-Force Decision Making and will co-convene an international workshop in June 2023 with Professor Steve Miller (Harvard University) as part of this project.

Professor Erskine’s work sits at the intersection of International Relations, Politics, and Moral and Political Philosophy.  Her research interests include the moral agency and responsibility of formal organisations in world politics; the ethics of war; the responsibility to protect (R2P); joint purposive action and informal coalitions; and the impact of new technologies on organised violence.  She is currently completing a book entitled Locating Responsibility: Institutional Moral Agency in a World of Existential Threats.

She is on the international advisory boards of the following academic journals:

• Journal of Political Philosophy
• Ethics and International Affairs
• International Relations
• Journal of International Political Theory
• Australian Journal of Defence and Strategic Studies

Before moving to Australia, she was British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and Clare Hall Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge and held a Personal Chair in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University until 2013. Prior to joining ANU in 2018, she was Professor of International Politics at UNSW.

RECENT JOURNAL ARTICLES:

• T. Erskine, ‘Existential Threats, Shared Responsibility, and Australia’s Role in “Coalitions of the Obligated”’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 2 (April 2022), 130-137.
•   T. Erskine, ‘Still Avoiding Armageddon:  Neglected Antecedents and the Future Promise of Australian Normative IR Theory’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 75, No. 6 (Dec. 2021), 619-636.
•   T. Erskine, ‘Intergovernmental Organizations and the Possibility of Institutional Learning:  Self-Reflection and Internal Reform in the Wake of Moral Failure', Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Dec. 2020), 503-520.