Stéphanie Martel, Ph.D.
stephanie.martel@queensu.ca
Queen's University
Address: Department of Political Studies, Queen's University, Mackintosh-Corry Hall, Room C321, 68 University ave.
City: Kingston, Ontario - K7L 3N6
Country: Canada
About Me:
I am an Assistant Professor of Political Studies -specializing in International Relations- at Queen's University, where I am also a Fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy. My research focuses on security cooperation and the practice of diplomacy in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific. I hold a PhD in Political Science from the Université de Montréal. Before joining Queen's, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, and the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies (McGill). My research has been published in academic journals The Pacific Review, Pacific Affairs, Monde Chinois, L'Espace Politique, and Social Transformations: Journal of the Global South. I am currently writing a book on the regional security debate in Southeast Asia and its effects on the development of a security community in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). I travel regularly to East and Southeast Asia for research and to take part in policy dialogues on regional strategic issues, alongside representatives of the government sector, academia, and civil society. I have also studied at the Université Lumière Lyon II, Sciences Po Lyon, and École normale supérieure - ENS-Lyon (M.Sc. Political Science - Contemporary East Asia). I am from Montreal and live in Kingston, Canada.
Research Interests
Asian Politics
Foreign Policy
International Law & Organization
East Asia Security
South China Sea
South-East Asia
Multilateral Diplomacy
International Security
Global Governance
My Research:
My research at the intersection of international security and global governance focuses on security regionalism, multilateral diplomacy, and the role of discourse in the social construction of world politics. I am currently working on three inter-related projects, the most important of which is a book manuscript adapted from my doctoral dissertation (Debating Security in the Asia-Pacific: Discourse in the Making of an ASEAN Community). The book develops a discourse-based framework for the study of security community-building as a way to better our understanding of the polysemy of this process in the 21st century. I use the case of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a basis to highlight the omnidirectional and a-linear character of security community-building in practice. The book covers the whole spectrum of issues that make up the regional security governance agenda, from transnational crime to the South China Sea disputes as well as the Rohingya crisis. It looks at how actors from the main "tracks" of Asia-Pacific regionalism (official, expert/informal, and non-governmental) advance distinct and competing positions on the meaning of security and the boundaries of the regional community, reproducing ASEAN's identity as a security community "in the making". My second project, "Multilateral Diplomacy as Practice: Identity, Contest and Change in the Making of an ASEAN Community" studies the impact of contestation over diplomatic practice on the resilience of multilateral institutions. At the empirical level, I focus on the Indo-Pacific and the case of ASEAN in particular as a prime example of this emerging but understudied trend in regional and global governance. I am also working on a project about Maritime Disputes in the Asia-Pacific. While territorial disputes are often reduced to a manifestation of competing material interests among states, this project looks at the South China Sea disputes and other conflicts in the Asia-Pacific from a different, interpretative perspective. It shows that participation in territorial disputes also serves as an important mechanism through which the identity of the state is performed and reproduced in practice. It points to the persistence of conventional modes of state territoriality through the emergence of innovative bordering practices, which serve as a way for actors to delineate, reproduce, and sometimes extend the contours of the national body in the name of the state beyond other understandings of where its boundaries ought to be. In addition to these major projects, I am currently developing collaborations on: Competing Narratives on the Rules-Based International Order in the "Indo-Pacific"; The Productive Role of Crisis in Institutional Resilience, and; Canadian Contributions to the Study of International Relations in the Global South. Finally, my previous research looked at the securitization of drug trafficking and other forms of transnational crime in Southeast Asia.
Publications:
Journal Articles:
'Non-traditional security’ (NTS) is prominently featured in the agenda of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and other ASEAN-led institutions in the Asia-Pacific. ‘NTS’ brings together a series transnational and non-military security threats that are considered common among regional states, urgent for them to attend to, and non-sensitive all at the same time. This a priori makes it a self-evident focus of attempts to bring regional security cooperation ‘to a higher plane’. However, this paper reveals that the uncontroversial character of NTS is overestimated, by shedding light on the co-existence of divergent – and potentially contradictory – interpretations of its meaning and implications in ASEAN and the wider region. In a context where ASEAN's relevance to the pursuit of regional security is increasingly being measured against its (in)ability to provide a coherent approach to security challenges that affect the region, the contested nature of NTS has important implications for the grouping's resilience in the twenty-first century.
DOI: 10.4000/espacepolitique.3181
Journal article in Social Transformations: Journal of the Global South.
Book Chapters:
Book chapter in Granger, Serge and Dominique Caouette (ed.), L’Asie du Sud-Est à la croisée des puissances. Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal.