Naspir was launched in December 2002 at the British International Studies Association annual conference at the London School of Economics.

Membership is open to anyone, academic and non-academic, who endorses its stated purpose of promoting politics and international relations scholarship which supports non-violent action against oppression. The oppression may be domestic or international, and may take many forms, including physical violence or denial of economic, social, cultural or political rights. Those carrying out the oppression may be states, corporations or other non-state actors. As what we choose to study and how we choose to study it are unavoidably political, the traditional academic pretence of neutrality is unsustainable. Scholarly standards are enhanced by explicit acknowledgement of that situation and by accounting for how one deals with it. Scholarship is a form of activism, but there is more to activism than scholarship.

Our membership has grown steadily to over 400 - mainly but not solely based in the UK; fairly evenly divided between academics, students, activists and interested citizens; and with academics and students from a wide range of disciplines, though mainly politics and international relations.