Congratulations to Ruoyu Li for winning the Edward Said Award for the 2025 best graduate student paper awarded by the Global Development Section of the International Studies Association (ISA), sponsored by Third World Quarterly. The award highlights outstanding scholarship in global development studies, and includes a certificate presentation at the ISA Annual Convention and a $500 prize.
Ruoyu’s research examines the deep entanglements between nuclear violence and imperialism, bringing together Pacific studies and critical security studies. She is currently completing her PhD in Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, Krieger School of Arts & Sciences.
Ruoyu’s winning article is entitled “The meanings of Nuclear Free: Exploring the Conceptual Complexity of Pacific Antinuclear and Nuclear Free Movements.” and was accepted by an edited volume to be published by McGill Queen’s University Press (tentatively titled, Global Legacies of Anti-Nuclear Activism).
We caught up with Ruoyu at ISA and asked her a few questions about her paper.
What key themes were explored in her paper?
I explore what it means to be nuclear-free. I look for solutions by tracing the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movements (1975-2003), a vibrant regional network that united Pacific Islands and Rim countries communities together on anti-nuclear issues and independence. I show how being ‘nuclear-free’ was not simply about reducing the number of weapons but, more importantly, as the NFIP taught us, about anticolonial and anti-imperial self-determination, women’s rights, and ecological justice.”
What inspired your research?
“The violence of nuclear weapons, the level of obfuscation of such violence, and the creative ways in which affected communities in the Pacific (and elsewhere) have struggled against or lived through it.
What does it mean to you to win this Award?
“Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism opened up my academic journey. His work, in general, introduced me to a rich and critical tradition of scholarship that I would love to contribute to. The GDS at ISA was also the first scholar network that I engaged with, as a junior year in college. Many of my mentors and friends were affiliated with the GDS. So, this award makes me feel that I am finally able to contribute back, however small, to the scholarly community and tradition! It is an honor.”
Ruoyu Li has already published work in Security Studies (“Testing as the Blindspot of Nuclear Nonuse”)., International Politics (Archive as land: toward a land-based archival methodology with Lynette Hiʻilani Cruz and Emilia Kandagawa), and E-International Relations (Review – The Wretched Atom).
About Ruoyu Li
Ruoyu Li is a Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science Department at Johns Hopkins University and a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. She will join the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Colgate University. Her research focuses on nuclear weapons, imperialism, the history of experiments, and nuclear-free movements in the Pacific Ocean.
Interested in becoming a member of ISA’s Global Development Section?
The Global Development Section draws together scholars broadly concerned with development and global justice working across a number of fields, for example, postcolonial studies, development studies, critical political economy, critical security studies, social and political theory, history, sociology, gender studies, and public policy.
Visit the GDS page on the ISA website if you are interested in becoming a member. Email [email protected] if you’d like to sign up to their newsletter.
