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Alex Stoffel

Lecturer in International Politics

Queen Mary University of London

Expertise Gender and Sexuality, Imperialism and Empire, Marxist theory, Critical Methodology

Email a.w.stoffel@qmul.ac.uk

Twitter @StoffelAlex

Bluesky @stoffelalex.bsky.social

ORCID 0000-0001-8165-8258

Address Queen Mary University of London

School of Politics and International Relations

ArtsOne Building, Mile End Road

London E1 4NS

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about

ABOUT

Dr. Alexander Stoffel is a Lecturer in International Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. He was previously a Fellow in Qualitative Methodology at the London School of Economics and holds degrees from the University of Oxford (BA History and Politics, 2014-17), the London School of Economics (MSc International Relations Theory, 2017-18), and Queen Mary University of London (PhD Political Science, 2019-23). His research takes up critical questions regarding the intersections of sexuality, race, and desire within capitalist expansion. He has published in, among other journals, International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, and Salvage and is an editor of the journal Historical Materialism, where he convenes the Sexuality and Political Economy Network.

 

His first monograph, Eros and Empire: The Transnational Struggle for Sexual Freedom in the United States (SUP 2025), reconsiders US-based struggles for sexual freedom since the 1960s, centering their transnational relations, practices, and infrastructures, and derives from this history new perspectives on contemporary debates about queerness, capital accumulation, and empire.

 

Reviews


"Through rich historical detail and theoretical sophistication, this book shows how queer struggles have engaged the question of the national and the transnational as a major site of disagreement, contestation, and emergence. Attending to the histories of gay liberation, black lesbian feminism, and HIV/AIDS activism, Stoffel argues that we cannot fully appreciate those movements without understanding their deep engagements with radical internationalism. The argument is one that should never be retired."
—Roderick Ferguson, Yale University

 

"In this groundbreaking book Stoffel illuminates how the erotic worldmaking of radical sexual politics in the United States was shaped by successive regimes of capitalist accumulation. By scaling up the concerns of queer Marxism to the level of the transnational while also offering a social history of queer theory, Eros and Empire revolutionizes our understanding of the relationship between the intimate and the imperial."

—Rahul Rao, University of St. Andrew's

 

"Stoffel reveals the dynamic interplay of Marxism and erotic worldmaking in queer thought, offering insight into movement contexts from gay liberation through AIDS activism. This is an important contribution to queer and trans studies, political theory, and United States and transnational history that will inspire readers to imagine new ways of changing the world."

—Emily Hobson, University of Nevada, Reno

"Eros and Empire situates the erotic worldmaking of American gay liberationists, Black lesbians, and AIDS activists beyond the nation-state frame, toward a critical engagement with post-war capitalism and American empire as both conditions of possibility and sites of struggle. Stoffel's work reorients queer theory and LGBTQ+ studies toward a transnational scale to build political projects on the radical possibilities of the 'ungovernability of desire'."
—Lauren B. Wilcox, University of Cambridge

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writing

SELECTED WRITING

Book

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Journal articles

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Book chapters

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  • (Forthcoming) Stoffel, Alexander. "Materialist Analyses of Sexuality." In: The SAGE Handbook of LGBTQ Studies. Sage Publications.

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Other writing

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teaching

TEACHING

Queen Mary University

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  • POL3003 Gender, Sexuality and Capitalism (third-year undergraduate) -- Convenor

  • POL271 Qualitative Methods for Social Science Research (second-year undergraduate) -- Convenor

  • POL274 Gender and Feminisms in World Politics (second-year undergraduate) -- Lecturer

  • POLM017 Dissertation (postgraduate)

  • POL318 Dissertation (third-year undergraduate)

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  • POL336 Race and Anti-Racism in World Politics (third-year undergraduate)

  • POL251 International Relations Theory (second-year undergraduate)

  • POL255 Colonialism, Capitalism, and Development (second-year undergraduate)

  • POL106 Introduction to International Relations (first-year undergraduate)

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LSE

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  • MY499 Dissertation in Social Research Methods (postgraduate)

  • MY428 Qualitative Text and Discourse Analysis (postgraduate)

  • MY4IR Research Design for International Relations (postgraduate)​

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Sciences Po Paris

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  • Critical International Relations Theories (third-year undergraduate)

contact

INVITED SPEAKING

​Public talks

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       Sex and the State, London, March 2024

  • ‘Who's our Enemy: Antagonism, Normativity, and Radicality in Queer Theory’

       Beyond Radical: Queer Theory and the UK, Brighton, October 2023

       Sexuality and Political Economy Network (Historical Materialism), March 2023

  • ‘Queer New Times’

       Liberation Conference, Warwick University Student Union, February 2023

       Eross Public Webinar Series, Dublin City University, September 2022

  • ‘The Dialectic of the International: Elaborating the Historical Materialism of the Gay Liberationists’

       Queer Space Research Forum, University College London, February 2021

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Podcast appearances

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       Politics and Pedagogy, November 2023

       PhD — Pretty Honest Discussions, June 2022

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Guest lectures

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  • ‘Black Feminist Worldmaking: Difference, the Erotic, and the Question of Empire’

       University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, October 2023

  • ‘Queer Theory, Gender Diversity, and International Politics’

       Gender/ed/ing International Politics, LSE, March 2023

  • ‘The Roots of Global Inequality’

       Sciences Po Le Havre, February 2021

  • ‘G for Gender’

       Sciences Po Le Havre, November 2020

  • ‘Queer (International Relations) Theory’

       University of Brasilia, May 2019

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Workshops

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  • ‘A Marxist Theory of Sexuality and Desire’
    Queer Materialism Winter Symposium, Oslo, February 2025

  • 'Anti-imperial Feminist Architectures of Resistance'
    BISA CPD Workshop, University of Westminster, December 2024

  • ‘Postcolonial Historical Methods’

      University of Sheffield, May 2024

  • ‘The Fundamentals of Dissertation Writing’

       University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, October 2023

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Roundtables​

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  • ‘Provincializing Cisness: Transnational Scholars on the Diversity of Sex/Gender Systems’
    New York University, NYC, March 2025

  • 'Queering/Querying International Political Economy'
    ISA Annual Convention, Chicago, March 2025

  • 'Naked Empire: Learning, Imagining, and Struggling for Different Futures' 
    ISA Annual Convention, Chicago, March 2025

  • ‘What’s the Point of Queer Theory? Critical Reflections on the Homonormative Turn in Queer IR’
    ISA Annual Convention, Chicago, March 2025

  • ‘Dialogues between International Political Economy and Postcolonial Theory’
    European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy, Bilbao, September 2024

  • ‘Whose Queer Political Economy? Conversations Within and Beyond IPE’

       BISA Annual Conference, Birmingham, June 2024

  • ‘The Global Politics of Barbie’

       Global Politics Unbound, London March 2024

  • ‘Queer IR in a Smaller World: Politicizing Economies of Desire’

       ISA Annual Convention, Nashville, March 2022​​

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