Key Concepts and Challenges in International Relations (IR): A Focus on Nomadism
International Relations (IR) has traditionally been shaped by a sedentarist worldview, rooted in the concept of the territorial state. This perspective renders IR's approach to its subject matter ‘static’ in two senses: it is both state-centric and immobile.

One significant consequence of this sedentarist worldview is the neglect of the world’s nomads. Defined by their spatial mobility, nomads have often been ignored or, at best, framed as an exceptional ‘Other.’ This framing has served to define concepts such as statehood and territoriality rather than integrating nomads as active participants in international politics.

The interventions in this forum challenge IR's sedentarism by:
•    Recovering nomads as international political actors, both past and present.
•    Broadening empirical foundations for IR theories through a wider range of cases.
•    Questioning teleological narratives that depict the territorial state as the inevitable endpoint of international system development.

At the same time, the forum cautions against reifying the nomad as merely the ‘Other’ of the state. It does so by:
•    Disaggregating nomadism from mobility, highlighting the diversity within nomadic experiences.
•    Problematizing the sedentarism/nomadism binary, encouraging a more nuanced perspective.

Rather than offering a blueprint for how IR scholars should study nomads, the forum’s primary goal is to encourage critical reflexivity about the sedentarist assumptions embedded in the discipline.