Dr Alexander Betts is Hedley Bull Research Fellow in International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. In addition to his links to the RSC, he holds senior research associate positions at the Global Economic Governance Programme (GEG) and the Centre for International Studies (CIS). He has been awarded a First Class Honours Degree in Economics, an MSc in International Relations (with Distinction), an MPhil in Development Studies (with Distinction), and a DPhil in International Relations.

Alex is Director of a research project on Global Migration Governance, which explores a range of questions relating to the role of international institutions in the politics of migration. The project is funded with a $500,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation and aims better understand the international politics of migration and to offer policy options for the reform of the institutional architecture regulating states’ responses to migration. As well as involving a significant amount of fieldwork, the project has organised a number of events in Oxford including the ‘Refugees in IR’ seminar series (with Gil Loescher) and a workshop, which will lead to an edited volume entitled Global Migration Governance.

Alex wrote a doctoral thesis in International Relations on international cooperation in the global refugee regime. It identified the important role of issue-linkage in facilitating cooperation on refugee protection. It highlighted how the politics of refugee protection is defined not by what happens in the refugee regime so much as the politics of security, immigration, trade, development, and peace-building. The thesis received the Winchester Prize for the best doctoral thesis in International Relations. A revised version will be published by Cornell University Press in 2009, with the provisional title, Protection by Persuasion: International Cooperation in the Refugee Regime.

Within the Refugee Studies Centre, Alex teaches a course on ‘International Relations and Forced Migration’, which offers a graduate level course in the application of concepts from international relations to the study of forced migration. The basis of the course will be published as a textbook by Wiley-Blackwell, Forced Migration and Global Politics, which will be available in summer 2009. His other teaching responsibilities include teaching the graduate course in International Relations Theory as part of the MPhil in International Relations and supervising masters and doctoral students at QEH and DPIR.

Alex has published in a range of peer reviewed journals including Perspectives on Politics, Global Governance, the Journal of Refugee Studies, the International Journal of Refugee Law, and the European Journal of Development Studies. He also regularly writes working papers as part of the UNHCR series New Issues on Refugee Research, and was a main contributing author to the most recent edition of UNHCR’s The State of the World’s Refugees. He has worked at UNHCR Headquarters as an Assistant Liaison Officer, and as a consultant on asylum and migration to the Council of Europe.

Recent Publications  

Protection by Persuasion: International Cooperation in the Refugee Regime (Cornell University Press, 2009)

Forced Migration and Global Politics (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)

UNHCR: The Politics and Practice of Refugee Protection into the Twenty-First Century (co-authored with Gil Loescher and James Milner), (Routledge, 2008).

‘Historical Lessons for Overcoming Protracted Refugee Situations’, in Loescher et al (2008), The Politics, Human Rights and Security Implications of Protracted Refugee Situations, (Tokyo: UNU Press).

‘North-South Cooperation in the Refugee Regime: The Role of Linkages’, Global Governance, Vol. 14:2 (April-June 2008), pp. 157–178.

‘Towards a Soft Law Framework for the Protection of Vulnerable Migrants’, New Issues in Refugee Research, UNHCR Working Paper No. 162, August 2008, (UNHCR: Geneva).