Skip to main content

Albert Cullell Cano

PhD candidate
Department of International Relations

Connect

About

About

Albert C Cano is a PhD candidate in International Relations at LSE. His research examines the role ideology and trauma play in post-conflict societies where violence is reproduced and transformed, rather than appeased. He’s also co-convener of the BISA Emotions in Politics and International Relations (EPIR) working group.

His research is funded by an LSE PhD Studentship; the Phelan US Centre Summer Research Grant, which supported his 2024 fieldwork in the US on Irish American diasporic peacebuilding; and an LSE Global South Award supporting fieldwork in Colombia. He’s also held a visiting position at the School of Psychology, Queen’s University Belfast, during field research in Northern Ireland.

Albert has guest lectured on Northern Ireland and the Troubles for Michigan State University’s Accent Global Learning (2023); on ‘Authoritarian Peacebuilding’ for LSE’s IR349/422 Conflict and Peacebuilding (2024); and on ‘Mass Atrocities’ for IR205 International Security (2025). He’s also held researcher positions at London Politica, (LSE), and ETHNICGOODS (Institut Barcelona Estudis Internationals [IBEI]). Additionally, he has contributed to the inter-university research Cluster of Excellence ‘Contestations of the Liberal Scripts - SCRIPTS’, hosted by Freie Universität Berlin, with a working paper on Chinese peacebuilding, and has also provided political commentary on Brexit’s impact for Spanish media.

He’s also served as Editor and Associate Editor of Millennium: Journal of International Studies for Vol. 52 and 53, where he co-edited (with Shreya Bhattacharya and Eva Leth Sørensen) the Vol. 52 Millennium Special Issue ‘Remapping the Critical: Imagining Anti-Hierarchical Futures in International Studies’, as well as co-written the Introduction to the Special Issue.

He holds an MSc in International Security from IBEI, during which he undertook an exchange programme in Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin. He also holds MAs in Contemporary Philosophy and Pedagogy, and BAs in Philosophy and English Studies, from the Universitat de Barcelona.

Research topic

Liberal Peacebuilding, Transgenerational Trauma, and National Identity Formation in Post-Brexit Northern Ireland

Drawing on poststructuralist and critical IR theory, and particularly theorising Lacanian IR, his research critically intervenes in the intersection among liberal peacebuilding practices, transgenerational trauma, and national identity formation. The empirical research problem being the so-called ‘Ceasefire Generation suicides’, his project problematises the interplay of mental health and peace in Northern Ireland. Thus, he intends to apply this political-psychological theory-building to peacebuilding efforts in Northern Ireland from 1998 to the present, showcasing the role of Brexit in exacerbating ethnonational and traumatic polarisations, with a comparative element to the post-2006 and post-2016 agreements in Colombia.

Teaching experience

  • IR349 Conflict and Peacebuilding (LSE 2023/24)
  • IR374/494 Conflict and Peacebuilding (LSE 2024/25)
  • IR205 International Security (LSE 2024/25)
  • IR211 America as a Global Power: FDR to Trump (LSE Summer School 2025)

Academic supervisor

Mark Hoffman

Research Cluster affiliation

Security and Statecraft Research Cluster

Theory/Area/History Research Cluster

Expertise

Critical Theory, Poststructuralism, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Žižek, Liberal internationalism, Peacebuilding, Conflict resolution, National identity formation, Nationalism, Northern Ireland, Brexit, UK politics, Chinese foreign policy.