Annette Freyberg-Inan

Annette Freyberg-Inan is a German-born political scientist and a faculty member at the University of Amsterdam’s Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences.^[1] She has written extensively on issues related to international relations theory, politics in Europe, including Turkey, and the internationalization of higher education.

Career

Freyberg-Inan earned her MA in Political Science and English from the University of Stuttgart and later completed her PhD in Political Science at the University of Georgia.^[2] Early in her career, she served as a UN consultant in Romania and became a Civic Education Project Visiting Faculty Fellow at the University of Bucharest (2000-2003).^[3] During this time, she co-founded The Romanian Journal of Society and Politics in 2000, the first Romanian political science journal to implement double-blind peer review.^[4]

Freyberg-Inan's 2004 book What Moves Man critically examines the foundations of realist International Relations theory, challenging its assumptions about human nature and advocating for a more nuanced understanding of state behaviour. Scholar Patrick James described it as “the best treatment of realism I have seen from an interdisciplinary standpoint.”^[5]

She has held academic positions at the University of Amsterdam, the Technische Universität Darmstadt, and the University of Edinburgh. Freyberg-Inan returned to the University of Amsterdam in 2013, where she served as the Director of the Graduate School of Social Sciences (2017-2023).^[6]

Freyberg-Inan served as the vice-president of the International Studies Association (2013-2014),^[7] as president of its Theory Section (2015-2017),^[8] and on the Executive Council of the Central and Eastern European International Studies Association (2010-2016). She has held editorial roles including Executive Editor of The Romanian Journal of Society and Politics (2000-2003), Associate Editor of the Journal of International Relations and Development (2012-2015),^[9] and co-editor of the European Journal of International Relations (2018-2022).^[10][11]

Books

• What Moves Man: The Realist Theory of International Relations and Its Judgment of Human Nature (SUNY Press, 2004).^[12]
• The Ghosts in Our Classrooms, or John Dewey Meets Ceausescu: The Promise and the Failures of Civic Education in Romania (Ibidem Verlag, 2006).^[13]
• Rethinking Realism in International Relations: Between Tradition and Innovation, co-edited with Ewan Harrison and Patrick James (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).^[14]
• Human Beings in International Relations, co-edited with Daniel Jacobi (Cambridge University Press, 2015).^[15]
• Growing Together, Growing Apart: Turkey and the European Union Today, co-edited with Mehmet Bardakci and Olaf Leisse (Nomos, 2016).
• Evaluating Progress in International Relations: How Do You Know? co-edited with Ewan Harrison and Patrick James (Routledge, 2016).
• Religious Minorities in Turkey: Alevi, Armenians, and Syriacs and the Struggle to Desecuritize Religious Freedom, co-authored with Mehmet Bardakçi, Christoph Giesel, and Olaf Leisse (Palgrave, 2017).^[16]
• Universitas: Why Higher Education Must Be International (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025).