Robert O’Brien is Professor of Political Science at McMaster University in Canada.  He is the former Chair of McMaster’s Political Science Department and former Director of the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition. Prior to his McMaster appointment, Professor O’Brien taught at the University of Sussex in England.  His teaching and research interests are in the fields of international political economy, global governance, global civil society, the political economy of climate change and political ecology. Professor O’Brien is a founding and consulting editor of the online open access Global Labour Journal and former co-editor of the journal Global Social Policy.

In his role as Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Public Diplomacy at the University of Sothern California (January to May 2022) Professor O’Brien will be conducting research on two projects. The first is titled ‘Western Internationalism in a Climate Change Era’. Its objectives are to: i. demonstrate how climate change necessitates an internationalist response; ii. develop a critique of previous Western internationalist projects; iii. advance a proposal for a revised climate sensitive Western internationalism. The second project, ‘Politics of a Dying Planet: Three Climate Scenarios’, argues that with the onset of climate change and mass species extinction humanity faces three possible futures: fascist barbarism, liberal adaption, or social transformation.