Barbara Buckinx
Biography
Barbara Buckinx is a Research Scholar and Lecturer in Public and International Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. She received her PhD in Politics from Princeton University and also holds MA and MSc degrees in Psychology and Social and Political Theory, both from the University of Edinburgh.
Prior to returning to Princeton, she was a pre-doctoral fellow with the Political Theory Project at Brown University, a Justitia Amplificata and Kassel Foundation post-doctoral fellow at Goethe University Frankfurt, and a Fellow with the Center on Global Justice at the University of California, San Diego.
Her research interests lie in global governance, migration, refugees, citizenship, and borders. Her teaching interests also include the environment and gender. Her work has appeared in Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, PS: Political Science & Politics, Migration Studies, Ethics & International Affairs, and Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric. Her article on “The case against removal: Jus noci and harm in deportation practice” (co-authored, A. Filindra) was the Winner of the 2015 Migration Studies Prize for Best Article.
She is co-editor of Domination and Global Political Justice: Conceptual, Historical, and Institutional Perspectives (Routledge, 2015) and is completing a monograph that investigates the problem of the unrestrained and potential exercise of power in global politics. In her monograph as well as her work more generally, Dr Buckinx aims to reconcile the divide between normative political theory and policy research and give guidance to scholars as well as policy makers on what to allow, what to prohibit, and how to target reform in global governance.
Dr. Buckinx recently taught Junior Research Seminars on immigration policy and global governance (SPI 403, 404) and a new course, The Ethical Policy Maker (SPI 368), which pairs a domestic or international public policy with relevant scholarship in ethics to better understand what is at stake. She has also guest lectured in SPI 501 and seminars on sustainability and climate engineering.
She is co-chair of The Global Justice Network and a member of the Global Health Impact's Pandemic Health Equity Working Group and the Normative Theory of Immigration Working Group. She also chairs the selection committee for the annual Jonathan Trejo-Mathys Essay Prize, which is co-sponsored by The Global Justice Network and the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College. At LISD, she is the Project Lead for the Project on Global Governance, the Project on Environment and Migration, and the Project on Gender in the Global Community.
- Child-Inclusive and Gender-Sensitive Reintegration Programmes. Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination and UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, 2025. With M. Ladue, L. Stark, and L. Perez. https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Gender-paper-CAAC-LISD-7-3.pdf
- “Distilling Solidarity,” American Journal of International Law Unbound, 119, 7-12, 2025. With N. Arastu, L. Bosniak, A. Frank-Vitale, and S. Gleeson. https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2025.4 - Selected as featured research on Princeton University’s home page and Princeton School of Public and International Affairs’ home page
- “Prospects for Globally Vigilant Citizenship,” Democratic Theory, 11(2), 47-68, 2024. https://doi.org/10.3167/dt.2024.110204