Barry Buzan

Barry Gordon Buzan (* 28 April 1946) is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and honorary professor at the University of Copenhagen and Jilin University. Buzan sketched the security complex theory as well as the Regional Security Complex Theory and is therefore together with Ole Wæver a central figure of the Copenhagen School.

Career

From 1988 to 2002 he was Project Director at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI). From 1995 to 2002 he was research Professor of International Studies at the University of Westminster, and before that Professor of International Studies at the University of Warwick. During 1993 he was visiting professor at the International University of Japan, and in 1997-8 he was Olof Palme Visiting Professor in Sweden.

He was Chairman of the British International Studies Association 1988-90, Vice-President of the (North American) International Studies Association 1993-4, and founding Secretary of the International Studies Coordinating Committee 1994-8. Since 1999 he has been the general coordinator of a project to reconvene the English school of International Relations, and from 2004 he is editor of the European Journal of International Relations. In 1998 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy, and in 2001 he was elected as an Academician of the Association of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences.

Besides, he is engaged as Advisor in Fair Observer, an online magazine covering global issues from a plurality of perspectives, on editorial policy and public policy issues.

Research Interests

Buzan defines his interests as:

1. the conceptual and regional aspects of international security;
2. international history, and the evolution of the international system since prehistory;
3. international relations theory, particularly structural realism;
4. international society, and the 'English School' approach to International Relations.

Works

Buzan has published extensively, his most important works include:

• People, States & Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations (1983; revised second edition 1991)
• The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism (1993) with Charles Jones and Richard Little
• Security: A New Framework for Analysis (1997) with Ole Waever, Jaap De Wilde
• The Arms Dynamic in World Politics (1998) with Eric Herring
• The Mind Map Book (2000) with Tony Buzan
• Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (2003) with Ole Waever
• The Evolution of International Security Studies (2009) with Lene Hansen.
• Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives on and beyond Asia (2010) editor with Amitav Acharya.

Personal

Holding the citizenships of Great Britain and Canada, Buzan is a graduate of the University of British Columbia (1968) where he started an uncompleted master programme. He received his doctorate at the London School of Economics (1973). He describes his political views as social democratic and his religious views as extreme secularist.

Buzan's wife, Deborah Skinner, is an artist and youngest daughter of psychologist B. F. Skinner. They have no children. Mind map writer Tony Buzan is his brother, with whom he co-authored the 'Mind Map Book'.