Staff Profiles

Modules taught

Undergraduate

• U23130 Researching Politics and International Relations: Analytical Modes and Controversies
• U26170 The Theory and Practice of Human Rights

Postgraduate

• P25116 Readings in Social Science
• P23119 Dilemmas of International Ethics 

My research in International Relations [IR] is informed by the fields of political philosophy and ethical thought. My expertise is in the area of normative International Relations theory, but I integrate this work with my interest in American pragmatism and am also a scholar and interpreter of John Dewey’s work. Additionally, I have published articles and book chapters on the insights of pragmatism for English School and Constructivist approaches to IR, methodologies in IR, and the conceptualization of IR as a social science.

Books

• Cochran M, Navari C, Ed., Progressivism and US Foreign Policy between the World Wars, Palgrave Macmillan (2017)
  ISBN: 9781137584335 eISBN: 9781137584328
  Abstract This book considers eleven key thinkers on American foreign policy during the inter-war period. All put forward systematic proposals for the direction, aims and instruments of American foreign policy; all were listened to, in varying degrees, by the policy makers of the day; all were influential in policy terms, as well as setting the terms of contemporary debate. The focus of the volume is the progressive agenda as it was formulated by Herbert Croly and The New Republic in the run-up to the First World War. An interest in the inter-war period has been sparked by America’s part in international politics since 9/11. The neo-conservative ideology behind recent US foreign policy, its democratic idealism backed with force, is likened to a new-Wilsonianism. However, the progressives were more wary of the use of force than contemporary neo-conservatives. The unique focus of this volume and its contextual, Skinnerian approach provides a more nuanced understanding of US foreign policy debates of the long Progressive era than we presently have and provides an important intellectual background to current debates. -- Supplied by publisher.Website 
• Cochran M, Cambridge Companion to Dewey, Cambridge University Press (2010)
  ISBN: 9780521697460
  Abstract John Dewey (1859-1952) was a major figure of the American cultural and intellectual landscape in the first half of the twentieth century. While not the originator of American pragmatism, he was instrumental to its articulation as a philosophy and the spread of its influence beyond philosophy to other disciplines. His prolific writings encompass metaphysics, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, psychology, moral philosophy, the philosophies of religion, art, and education, and democratic political and international theory. The contributors to this Companion examine the wide range of Dewey's thought and provide a critical evaluation of his philosophy and its lasting influence, both elsewhere in philosophy and on other disciplines.Website 

Journal articles

• Cochran M, 'Jane Addams und ihre internationale Ethik eines sozialen Radikalismus: globale Gerechtigkeit als realistische Utopie'
  Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 64 (5) (2016) pp.740-756
  ISSN: 0012-1045 eISSN: 2192-1482
  Abstract As a philosophy with human problems at its centre and in a time of rapidly changing social conditions, classical Pragmatism engaged an ethics of social radicalism, an ethics that extended as far as human problems do: to the global. To understand how ideas like global justice are generated within pragmatism, it is important to examine not only the thought, but also the activism of pragmatists and how the experimental method of pragmatism was applied to global problems of its day. The life and work of Jane Addams is particularly rich for this kind of investigation. Addams met human problems at both local and global levels with the working hypothesis of applying and observing what a democratic attitude of radical social justice brings to felt indeterminacies. This article begins by comparing and contrasting a pragmatist approach to global justice as opposed to one better known, that of John Rawls, and moves on to examining the difference that Addams’s experience as a woman and an activist makes to how she practiced the pragmatist method in relation to global problems of the Progressive Era.Website 
• Cochran M, 'Pragmatism and international Relations: a story of closure and opening'
  European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 4 (1) (2012) pp.138-158
  ISSN: 2036-4091
  Abstract The discipline of International Relations [IR] is experiencing a pragmatist turn. Here I will argue that this is a critical moment to take stock and reflect on where it is heading. First, in order to understand what pragmatism might bring to IR as a social sci-ence today, it is important to examine the history of IR and explain why pragmatism ap-pears not to have registered in its past. Why have the contributions of Wiliam James and, especially, John Dewey apparently disappeared from the early history of the field? Sec-ondly, having examined what the problem was before, I go on to argue that the opportuni-ty that exists today for pragmatism to influence the field is constructed upon its critique of empiricist epistemology, its scope for bridging plural methods, and the broadening of our understanding of what international relations is, opening the range of possible ontological claims which the discipline finds necessary at this time.Website 
• Cochran M, 'Charting the ethics of the English school: what 'Good' is there in a middle-ground ethics?'
  International Studies Quarterly 53 (1) (2009) pp.203-225
  ISSN: 0020-8833
  Abstract This article aims to advance our understanding of the development of English School thinking on international ethics by outlining three phases of ethical inquiry within the British Committee. The article argues that, throughout the life of the Committee, its outlook was conditioned by a pervading moral skepticism, which was reflected in the School's commitment to a "middle-ground ethics"; however, at various times the Committee members' views changed about how maximalist the "good" could be that oriented this ethical position. Awareness of this ebb and flow helps us better understand Hedley Bull's characterization of the ethics of pluralism and solidarism within the School as well as the precise challenge contemporary English School theorists face if they are to move beyond the normative cul-de-sac that British Committee members encountered in each phase of their ethical discussions.Website 

Book chapters

• Cochran M, 'The "Newer Ideals" of Jane Addams's Progressivism' in Cochran M and Navari C (ed.), Progressivism and US Foreign Policy between the World Wars, Palgrave Macmillan (2017)
  ISBN: 9781137584335 eISBN: 9781137584328
  Abstract Jane Addams, in both her thought and activism during the Progressive era, was focused on human problems at both local and global levels and asked of each level what a democratic attitude of radical social justice could bring to felt indeterminacies. She employed a philosophical method associated with American pragmatism, made her own as a relational and feminist approach—inseparable from her lived experience as a woman and advocate of social reform domestically and internationally. The historical context of the Progressive era and Addams’s experience of it, her part in the American Settlement movement and her leadership of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom are discussed to illuminate her human-centered, democratic social approach to international relations.Website 
• Cochran M, 'IR Theory as an Ethical Pursuit' in Ken Booth and Toni Erskine (ed.), International Relations Theory Today, Wiley (2016)
  ISBN: 978-0-745-67120-8 eISBN: 978-1-509-50834-1
  Website 
• Navari C, Warner D, Nardin T, Fabry M, Lang A, Baaz M, Vaha ME, Brown C, Hurrell A,, 'Hedley Bull and John Dewey: Two Middle Grounders and a Pragmatic Approach to the Nuclear Dilemma' in Cornelia Navari (ed.), Ethical Reasoning in International Affairs: Arguments from the Middle Ground, Palgrave Macmillan UK (2013)
  ISBN: 978-1-349-45066-4 eISBN: 978-1-137-29096-0
  
• Cochran M, 'Conceptualizing the power of transnational agents: pragmatism and international public spheres' in Does Truth Matter? Democracy and Public Space, Springer (2009)
  ISBN: 9781402088483
  

Conferences

“Contributions of the English School”, Invited Workshop at the European University Institute, Department of Political and Social Sciences, Florence Italy, May 2014

Dr Molly Cochran has research and teaching interests in international relations theory, international ethics, gender, American pragmatism and democracy and global governance.

She worked at the Office of Human Rights Watch to block US negotiation of bilateral immunity agreements in relation to the International Criminal Court and is currently researching the advocacy of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom at the League of Nations.