Dr Adam Bower is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in International Relations at the University of St Andrews. He was the founding co-director of the Centre for Global Law and Governance and continues to sit on the Steering Committee of the Institute for Legal and Constitutional Research. He is a member of the St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science and a Fellow of the Outer Space Institute, a global network of transdisciplinary space experts. He is also a member of the management team of the Scottish Council on Global Affairs, the first all-Scotland institute focusing on non-partisan and policy-relevant academic research on global politics and foreign policy. 

Dr Bower's research explores the interaction of international law, norms, and political power in shaping outcomes in global politics. Theoretically, he is interested in understanding how actors strategically engage with international institutions and how norms and legal rules in turn shape and constrain future policy choices in often unanticipated ways. He studies these dynamics principally in the fields of arms control and disarmament (“conventional” and space weapons), international humanitarian and criminal law, and the governance of outer space activities. His teaching is informed by this research agenda and spans IR theory, international organisations and law, security, and justice.

Dr Bower previously held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oxford (Department of Politics and International Relations and Nuffield College) and the European University Institute in Florence, Italy (Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow). Dr Bower received his PhD in Political Science from the University of British Columbia in 2012.

Further information on research and teaching can be found at his personal website: http://adam-bower.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/.