Prof Toni Erskine

Toni Erskine is Professor of International Politics in the Department of International Relations, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University (ANU), recipient of the International Studies Association's 2024-25 Distinguished Scholar Award in International Ethics, and Associate Fellow of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge University. She is Chief Investigator of the 'Anticipating the Future of War: AI, Automated Systems, and Resort-to-Force Decision Making' Research Project, funded by the Australian Goverment through a grant by Defence.

She recently served a five-year term as Director of the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the ANU (2018-2023). She also served as Editor of International Theory: A Journal of International Politics, Law, and Philosophy (2019-2023). She was appointed Academic Lead for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) / Association for Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) 'AI for Social Good: Strengthening Capabilities and Government Frameworks in Asia and the Pacific' Research Project (2021-2023), which allowed her to work closely with government departments in Thailand and Bangladesh.

Before being appointed at the ANU, Professor Erskine held Personal Chairs in International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy. Prior to that, she was British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Cambridge University. She has held Visiting Fellowships at Oxford University, the WZB Social Science Centre in Berlin, Cambridge University, the University of Sydney, and RMIT University (where she held the Lurie-Murdoch Senior Research Fellowship in Global Ethics).

Her research is located at the intersection of International Relations (IR)/international security and moral and political philosophy. Her areas of research focus include: the moral agency and responsibility of formal organisations (including states, intergovernmental organisations, and transnational corporations) in world politics; the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on organised violence and questions of 'misplaced responsibility' in this context; the ethics of war; human protection in the face of mass atrocity crimes; the role of joint purposive action and informal coalitions in response to global crises and existential threats; cosmopolitan theories and their critics; and the prospect (she's sceptical!) of AI-driven systems as 'synthetic moral agents'.

Her recent publications include the following:

• Toni Erskine. 2024. 'AI and the Future of IR: Disentangling Flesh-and-Blood, Institutional, and Synthetic Moral Agency in World Politics', Review of International Studies, 50th Anniversary Issue, Vol. 50, No. 3: pp. 534-559.
• Toni Erskine and Liane Hartnett, 2024. 'Images of a Statist Ethics in "Western: and Chinese IR Theory: Locating (and Deciphering) the "Moral Realism" of the Tsinghua Approach', The Chinese Jounral of International Politics, Vol. 17, No. 2: pp. 153-173.
• Toni Erskine. 2024. 'Before Algorithmic Armageddon: The Erosion of Restraint as an Immediate Risk of AI Infiltrating the Decision to Wage War', Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 2: 175-190.
• Toni Erskine and Steven E. Miller, 2024. 'AI and the Decision to Go to War: Future Risks and Opportunities', Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 2: 135-147.
• P. Lu, X. Ren, T. Erskine, S. Guzzini, B. Buzan, B. Jahn, & J. Rosenberg, 2024. 'Forum: Debating the Chinese School(s) of IR Theory', The Chinese Journal of Internaitonal Politics, Vol. 17, No. 3: pp. 277-305. 

Professor Erskine delivered the 2023 John Gee Memorial Lecture, which can be viewed here: 'Before Algorithmic Armageddon: The Immediate Risks of AI in War'.

BA (Hons) in Political Science (First Class), University of British Columbia; MSc in Social and Political Theory (with Distinction), University of Edinburgh; PhD, University of Cambridge