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This project will thus seek to retrace the relationship between the thought and practice of geopolitics and that of international law. Focusing, in particular, on the emerging threads of geopolitical thought after 1890, it will not only provide an account of the juridical dimensions of geopolitics, but also broaden our understanding of international law’s own engagement with geophysical space. In developing an account of what I call “geopolitical jurisprudence,” I seek to draw attention to the processes by which geopolitical imaginaries come to be formalised through the creation of “international frontiers.” International frontiers, here, are not the sovereign frontiers of the nation state, but extra-sovereign demarcations that run across global space, creating an alternate terrain of jurisdictional rivalry and contestation. It is only by way of recognising that geopolitical imaginaries depend upon their formalisation, I argue, that we may better contest them or offer up alternatives.
Recommended Reading
Craven, Matthew. “Between Law and History: The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 and the Logic of Free Trade.” London Review of International Law 3, no. 1 (2015): 31–59.
—. “‘Other Spaces’: Constructing the Legal Architecture of a Cold War Commons and the Scientific-Technical Imaginary of Outer Space.” European Journal of International Law 30, no. 2 (2019): 547–572.
Craven, Matthew, Sundhya Pahuja, and Gerry Simpson. “Reading and Unreading a Historiography of Hiatus.” In International Law and the Cold War, edited by Matthew Craven, Sundhya Pahuja, and Gerry Simpson, 1–24. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

2025/2026
Matthew Craven, PhD
Professor of International Law
SOAS University of London
Born in 1963 in Felsted, United Kingdom
BA Hons Law, LLM, and PhD in International Law, University of Nottingham
Arbeitsvorhaben
Geopolitical Jurisprudence at the Frontier
We seem to be living in an age when “geopolitics” has returned to the international agenda in a way that has not been apparent for several decades. Whether one looks at the Russian invasion of Ukraine, US moves to authorise deep-sea bed mining, or the extension of Chinese claims over the South China Seas, a much commented-upon pattern seems to be emerging in which geopolitical contestation over global resources has thoroughly displaced the traditional “rules-based” international legal order. A simple question may be asked nevertheless: is this oppositional description of international law, on the one hand, and geopolitics, on the other, as straightforward as seems to be imagined? Might there not be more politics in the law, and more law in the politics, than we care to admit? And if so, how might we then respond to what appears to be the recrudescence of a geopolitical antagonism?This project will thus seek to retrace the relationship between the thought and practice of geopolitics and that of international law. Focusing, in particular, on the emerging threads of geopolitical thought after 1890, it will not only provide an account of the juridical dimensions of geopolitics, but also broaden our understanding of international law’s own engagement with geophysical space. In developing an account of what I call “geopolitical jurisprudence,” I seek to draw attention to the processes by which geopolitical imaginaries come to be formalised through the creation of “international frontiers.” International frontiers, here, are not the sovereign frontiers of the nation state, but extra-sovereign demarcations that run across global space, creating an alternate terrain of jurisdictional rivalry and contestation. It is only by way of recognising that geopolitical imaginaries depend upon their formalisation, I argue, that we may better contest them or offer up alternatives.
Recommended Reading
Craven, Matthew. “Between Law and History: The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 and the Logic of Free Trade.” London Review of International Law 3, no. 1 (2015): 31–59.
—. “‘Other Spaces’: Constructing the Legal Architecture of a Cold War Commons and the Scientific-Technical Imaginary of Outer Space.” European Journal of International Law 30, no. 2 (2019): 547–572.
Craven, Matthew, Sundhya Pahuja, and Gerry Simpson. “Reading and Unreading a Historiography of Hiatus.” In International Law and the Cold War, edited by Matthew Craven, Sundhya Pahuja, and Gerry Simpson, 1–24. Cambridge University Press, 2019.