Politics, International Relations & Philosophy

I joined SPIRE in September 2012 as a Lecturer in International Relations. I have a MA in Peace and Conflict Studies from Malmö University (Sweden), a MSc in Security and Citizenship from Aberystwyth University and I was awarded a PhD from the University of Birmingham in 2011. Prior to coming to Keele I was teaching Security Studies and International Relations Theory at the University of Warwick and the University of Birmingham.

My research interests broadly concern gender, security and popular culture and engage with and contribute to feminist security studies, poststructuralist theorising of political violence, popular culture and IR as well as the role of emotions in global politics. My doctoral thesis ‘Heroines, Monsters, Victims: Representations of female agency in political violence and the Myth of Motherhood’ analyzes how female soldiers and ‘terrorists’ are portrayed in popular films and mass media and demonstrates a tension between female bodies’ ‘natural’ capacity to give life and ‘unnatural’ capacity to take life. Thus, it argues that cultural representations of female bodies’ violent actions are saturated with notions of motherhood.

The conclusions of my PhD raised further questions about how heroism is communicated through discourses of security in popular culture, but also by the Armed Forces and these questions guide my current and future research agenda. My present research project 'Redefining Heroism? Gender, Security and the Politics of Popular Culture'  investigates how seemingly ‘neutral’ representations of heroism in cultural artefacts such as videogames, music videos, toys and recruitment campaigns by the Armed Forces reinforce highly problematic and political assumptions about gender and, importantly, how such understandings of heroism might impact upon the role of women in the Armed Forces.

I am the Module Convenor for ‘Securing the Global Order’ (level 1) and ‘The Politics of Security’ (MA level). I also contribute to ‘Freedom and Equality’ (level 2).

I am happy to supervise doctoral students interested in critical security studies, particularly feminist and poststructuralist approaches to security /insecurity/ war/ violence, but also topics related to the politics of emotions, aesthetics and popular culture.