This edited volume brings back key thinkers whose work is foundational for the discipline of International Relations. International Relations is as much a conversation with the living as with the dead, and The Return of the Theorists presents forty dialogues with key thinkers that shaped the field, conducted by renowned contemporary IR scholars.

Richard Ned Lebow is Professor of International Political Theory in the War Studies Department of King's College London, Bye-Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge and the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor (Emeritus) of Government at Dartmouth College. His most recent publications are Franz Ferdinand Lives: A World Without World War I, Constructing Cause in International Relations and, co-authored with Simon Reich, Goodbye Hegemony! Rethinking America's Role in the World (all titles published in 2014). Peer Schouten is a postdoctoral researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies and editor-in-chief of Theory Talks. He works on issues ranging from International Relations Theory to mining-related conflicts in Central Africa. Hidemi Suganami was Professor of the Philosophy of International Relations at Keele before joining Aberystwyth University in 2004. His major works include The Domestic Analogy and Word Order Proposals (1989); On the Causes of War (1996); and, with Andrew Linklater, The English School of International Relations (2006).