Dr. Erin Lin, associate professor of Political Science and Mershon Center affiliate, has been honored by the International Studies Association (ISA) with two prestigious awards for her book When the Bombs Stopped: The Legacy of War in Rural Cambodia. Lin received both the T.V. Paul Book Prize and the 2026 Best Book on International Ethics.

The T.V. Paul Book Prize was established in honor of T.V. Paul, the 56th president of the International Studies Association (ISA) (2016-17) and the founding Director of the Global Research Network on Peaceful Change (GRENPEC). The book selected for the GIRS Best Book Award has made a substantial theoretical and empirical contribution to the study and scholarship of Global IR, including global peaceful change. 

Each year, the ISA International Ethics Section awards one prize for the best book published in the field of international ethics at the International Ethics section business meeting at the ISA Convention. The award recognizes a book that excels in originality, significance, and rigor in the broadly defined field of international ethics. The subject matter of the book can be, but is not limited to, international descriptive ethics, international normative ethics, metaethics, comparative ethics, international religious ethics, international political theory, and international legal theory.

Called an “important, sobering, and very relevant contribution to our understanding of the legacies of war” by Elisabeth Jean Wood, Yale University, When the Bombs Stopped traces the long-run consequences of the US bombing of Cambodia. Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United States dropped 500,000 tons of bombs over Cambodia—more than the combined weight of every man, woman, and child in the country. What began as a secret CIA infiltration of Laos eventually expanded into Cambodia and escalated into a nine-year war over the Ho Chi Minh trail fought primarily with bombs. Fifty years after the last sortie, residents of rural Cambodia are still coping with the unexploded ordnance that covers their land. Drawing on interviews, original econometric analysis, and extensive fieldwork, Lin upends the usual scholarly perspective on the war and its aftermath, presenting the viewpoint of those who suffered the bombing rather than those who dropped the bombs. 

Dr. Lin will collect her awards and cash prizes at the upcoming ISA Annual Convention, taking place here in Columbus March 22-25, 2026.