Pol Bargués

Pol Bargués

Senior Research Fellow and Research Coordinator

Geographical lines: Europe
Thematic lines: Global geopolitics and security

Pol Bargués is a Senior Research Fellow and Research Coordinator at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs), working on the Horizon 2020 project (JOINT), which examines the EU’s external action in conflict-affected societies. He also contributes to the project REGROUP on governance and policies after Covid-19 and SHAPEDEM on EU’s democracy support policies in its Eastern & Southern Neighbourhoods

Bargués earned his PhD from the University of Westminster, United Kingdom, in 2014. Before joining CIDOB in 2018, he was a post-doc research fellow at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research and the Institute for Development and Peace (both from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany). He has also taught several International Relations courses in the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals, Spain.

Over the years he has developed an interest in the intersection of philosophy, critical theory and international relations. He has critically interrogated international interventions and explored the ideas of resilience, hybrid peace, and hope. He is author of Deferring Peace in International Statebuilding: Difference, Resilience and Critique (Routledge 2018) and has published in diverse academic journals like Review of International Studies, Global Society, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Millennium Review of International Studies or Democratization. Since 2020, Bargués is Editor in Chief in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding and of the book series Routledge Studies in Intervention and Statebuilding.

Website: www.polbargues.com

Publications

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Projects

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Press

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External publications

Books 

Alcaro, Riccardo and Pol Bargués (2025) Conflict Management and the Future of EU Foreign and Security Policy: Relational Power Europe. London and New York: Routledge.

Waldow, Valerie, Pol Bargués & David Chandler (Eds) (2024) Hope in the Anthropocene: Agency, Governance and Negation. Edinburgh University Press

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol, David Chandler and Elena Simon (2018) Mapping and Politics in the Digital Age. London: Routledge

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol (2018) Deferring Peace in International Statebuilding: Difference, Resilience and Critique London: Routledge  

Articles  

Bargués, Pol. (2025). Pragmatism, courage, and ideals of peace in times of war. Peacebuilding, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/21647259.2024.2411829

Bargués, Pol, Assem Dandashly, Hylke Dijkstra & Gergana Noutcheva (2024) Engagement against All Odds? Navigating Member States’ Contestation of EU Policy on Kosovo, The International Spectator 59 (1), 19-38.

Pol Bargués, Jonathan Joseph, Ana E Juncos (2023) Rescuing the liberal international order: crisis, resilience and EU security policy. International Affairs 99 (6), 2281–2299. 

Pol Bargués, David Chandler, Sebastian Schindler and Valerie Waldow (2023) Hope after ‘the end of the world’: rethinking critique in the Anthropocene. Contemporary Political Theory 

Pol Bargués (2023) Liberal Peacebuilding and its Critiques. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies

Pol Bargués, María Martín de Almagro & Katrin Travouillon (2023) New Visions, Critiques, and Hope in the Post-Liberal Age? A Call for Rethinking Intervention and Statebuilding, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 17(1), 1-15.

Maria Martin de Almagro & Pol Bargués (2022) A feminist opening of resilience: Elizabeth Grosz, Liberian Peace Huts and IR critiques. Journal of International Relations and Development. 25, pages 967–992. 

Pol Bargués & Schmidt, Jessica (2021) Resilience and the Rise of Speculative Humanitarianism: Thinking Difference through the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 49 (2), pp. 197-223.

Bargués, Pol & Morillas, Pol (2021) From democratization to fostering resilience: EU intervention and the challenges of building institutions, social trust, and legitimacy in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Democratization, 28:7, 1319-1337.

Bargués, Pol (2020) ‘Peacebuilding without peace? On how pragmatism complicates the practice of international intervention’ Review of International Studies 46 (2), 237-255.

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol (2020) ‘Resilience is “always more” than our practices: Limits, critiques, and skepticism about international intervention’ Contemporary Security Policy 41 (2), 263-286.

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol and Maria Martin de Almagro (2020) ‘Prevention From Afar: Gendering Resilience and Sustaining Hope in Post-UNMIL Liberia’ Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 14 (3), 327-348.

Bargués, Pol (2020) 75 años de Naciones Unidas: La ONU y la Idea de Sostener la Paz en un Mundo Multipolar 72 (2): 341-349.

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol (2019) ‘From Critique to Affirmation in International Relations’ Global Society 32 (1), 1-19.

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol and Jessica Schmidt (2019) ‘Learning to Be Postmodern in an All Too Modern World: “Whatever Action” in International Climate Change Imaginaries’ Global Society 32 (1), 45-65.

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol and Xavier Mathieu (2018) ‘Beyond Silence, Obstacle and Enigma: Revisiting the Problem of Difference in Peacebuilding’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 12 (3), 283-299.  See also edited book from special issue: The Politics of Peacebuilding in a Diverse World: Difference Exposed (London: Routledge).

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol and Elisa Randazzo (2018) 'Hybrid peace revisited: an opportunity for considering self-governance?' Third World Quarterly 39 (8), 1543-1560.

Pol Bargués-Pedreny (2017) 'Connolly and the never-ending critiques of liberal peace: from the privilege of difference to vorarephilia'Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 30 (2-3), 216-234.  

Pol Bargués-Pedreny  (2016) ‘From Promoting to De-Emphasising “Ethnicity”: Rethinking the Endless Supervision of Kosovo’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 10 (3), 222-240.  

Pol Bargués-Pedreny (2015) ‘Realising the “Postmodern” Dream: Strengthening the Resilience of Post-Conflict Societies and the Promise of Peace,’ Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, 3 (2), 113–132.  

Book Chapters 

Bargués, Pol (2025) 'Pragmatismo', en Ángela Iranzo Dosdad, Itziar Ruiz-Giménez Arrieta, Marta Iñiguez de Heredia (Eds) Manual de estudios críticos: cartografías disidentes para comprender las relaciones internacionales (pp. 371-390). Tirant lo Blanch.

Bargués, Pol y Maria Martin de Almagro Iniesta (2024) La prevención de la violencia contra las mujeres en Liberia: Los límites de la «Spotlight Initiative», en Esther Barbé y Magdalena María Martin Martínez (Eds) La violencia contra las mujeres en un orden internacional en transición Aranzadi.

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol (2022). Més guerra per continuar la guerra. En: FundiPau (edició i coordinació). Aprenentatges pendents arran de la guerra Ucraïna. 

Bargués, Pol (2021) 'Conclusion: European vulnerability and the policy dilemmas of resilience in times of coronavirus' in Elena Korosteleva and Trine Flockhart Resilience in EU and International Institutions Redefining Local Ownership in a New Global Governance Agenda. London and New York: Routledge.

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol and Xavier Mathieu (2019) ‘Intervening in a Diverse World: Revisiting the ‘problem’ of difference in international statebuilding’. In: Nicolas Lemay-Hébert Handbook on Intervention and Statebuilding. Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol, David Chandler and Elena Simon (2018) ‘Introduction’. In Pol Bargués-Pedreny, David Chandler and Elena Simon Mapping and Politics in the Digital Age. London: Routledge

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol (2018)‘Mapping without the world and the poverty of digital humanitarians’. In Pol Bargués-Pedreny, David Chandler and Elena Simon Mapping and Politics in an Age of Critique. London: Routledge, 2018.  

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol ‘False Promise: Local Ownership and the Denial of Self-Government’. In Tobias Debiel, Thomas Held and Ulrich Schneckener (Eds.) Peacebuilding in Crisis? Rethinking Paradigms and Practices of Transnational Cooperation, pp. 227-239 (London: Routledge Global Cooperation Series, 2016).  

Other contributions, blog engagement

Bargués, Pol & Schmidt, Jessica (2021).  The Tragic Practice of Prevention. Centre for Global Cooperation Research. Quarterly Magazine (April) 

Bargués, Pol (2020) Containing Coronavirus: Resilience in Times of Catastrophe. E-International Relations, March 23. 

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol, Kai Koddenbrock, Jessica Schmidt and Mario Schmidt (2015) Ends of Critique. Global Dialogue. Duisburg: Käte Hamburger Research/ Centre for Global Cooperation Research 2015.  

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol,  Kai Koddenbrock, Jessica Schmidt and Mario Schmidt (2015) ‘Introduction’. In: Pol Bargués-Pedreny, Kai Koddenbrock, Jessica Schmidt and Mario Schmidt (eds.), Ends of Critique. Global Dialogue 10, pp. 6-10. Duisburg: Käte Hamburger Research/ Centre for Global Cooperation Research 2015

Bargués-Pedreny, Pol (2015)‘The Betrayal of the New Utopianism.’ In Pol Bargues-Pedreny, Kai Koddenbrock, Jessica Schmidt and Mario Schmidt (Eds.) Ends of Critique. Global Dialogue 10, pp. 62-73 (Duisburg: Käte Hamburger Research/ Centre for Global Cooperation Research, 2015).