Andrew Linklater

Andrew Linklater FAcSS (3 August 1949 – 5 March 2023) was a British scholar of international relations and political theorist who taught at universities in Australia and the United Kingdom. In 2000, he was featured as one of the fifty thinkers in Martin Griffith's Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations.

Early life and education

Linklater was born on 3 August 1949 to Andrew Linklater and Isabella née Forsyth. His father was a postman and his mother worked various odd jobs. He studied Politics and International Relations as an undergraduate at the University of Aberdeen, and worked as a bus driver while he studied. He then received an MA degree from the University of Aberdeen in 1971, a BPhil degree from Balliol College, University of Oxford in 1973, and a PhD degree from the London School of Economics in 1978. His PhD thesis was titled Obligations beyond the state: the individual, the state and humanity in international theory, and was later published as Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations.

Teaching

His teaching career began at the University of Tasmania from 1976 to 1981, before moving to Monash University in 1982, where he taught for ten years. In 1993, he became professor of international relations at Keele University, and became Dean of Postgraduate Affairs in 1997 until he left Keele in 1999. In January 2000 he joined the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth as the Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Politics.