pathway: Political Science and International Studies

I am researching how violence against women in European politics (VAWEP) shapes political participation. Events like Jo Cox’s murder and #MeToo show that women are targeted not only as politicians but as women, discouraging political ambition and undermining democracy. I aim to understand how common VAWEP is in Europe and how it affects young women’s interest in politics. My project focuses on the European Parliament, combining interviews, surveys, and an experimental study with young women. I will map types of violence, assess its impact on political careers, and test whether learning about VAWEP reduces young women’s willingness to enter politics.

This research focuses on the rise of anti-gender movements in the UK and the US, particularly within the context of its relationship to the reactionary right. The project will analyse this through the lens of necropolitics in order to see how power and rhetoric can metaphorically or literally kill members of a marginalised group.

Trust in government and politicians is low and declining in many countries across the world. My research focuses on the UK context, where distrust is becoming ever more intense. I am interested in how citizens judge whether to trust politicians and how online information shapes their decision-making. I am taking a mixed-methods approach using surveys, content analysis, focus groups and an online experiment. My first study explored how MPs convey trustworthiness via social media. My current work looks at how independent regulation of pay and expenses relates to political trust judgements.

My research broadly looks at post-conflict memory in schools. I am using the Franco-Algerian war of decolonisation as a case study, analysing how this colonial war in taught in French schools. I’m particularly interested in understanding the effects these teachings and forms of knowledge productions have on the youth in France.

Key words: memory, knowledge production, migration, identity, de/colonisation, France, Maghreb, othering.

This research is a philosophical investigation into how countries interpret ‘the international’ that will have relevance for International Relations and for contemporary understanding of Chinese foreign policy and interaction. Structurally, the research is twofold. Firstly, philosophical hermeneutics as developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Martin Heidegger, will be employed to demonstrate theory of how international units interpret and understand the international. Secondly, in order to operationalise this theory, an analysis of China as a case study will be conducted, through which I will seek to understand to what extent there is a unique Chinese understanding of the international. By understanding whether there is a unique Chinese interpretation of the international, better understanding of Chinese actions and behaviour in the context of the international will be attained.

With the aim of interrogating and destabilising military power, my research is exploring how the British public diversely perform militarism in their everyday spaces. I am interested in the subtle, embodied and affective performances by which violence and war (and their gendered and racialised hierarchies) are made possible. I am particularly attentive to how the public engages with militarism because their support, ambivalence, indifference, and sometimes resistance are rarely the focus of research, despite being central to understanding how militarism works. My research contributes to ongoing conversations in feminist IR and Critical Military Studies.

Populism, which posits ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’, is often considered a significant challenge to liberal democracy. Namely, because of its supposed incompatibility with liberal-democratic pluralism, the understanding that political power should be widely diffused. In response, several political, academic, and media elites have come to occupy an ‘anti-populist’ position to defend pluralism from populist challengers. Such elites, however, have themselves been accused of undermining pluralism through their supposed marginalisation of dissent and demonisation of those who challenge neoliberalism. My research appraises anti-populist discourses to determine their efficacy in promoting pluralism against populism’s oft alleged authoritarian tendencies.

A key problem in contemporary political philosophy is the attempt to reconcile liberty and equality on the one hand and finding the institutional design principles that would foster freedom as non-domination on the other. My project proposes to reconcile a libertarian socialist account of freedom and equality with non-statist constitutional design principles. I aim to demonstrate that the anarchist political economy of decentralised federalism reconciles liberty and equality on left-libertarian terms and meets republican defenses of freedom. By showing the real-world applicability of this model, this research will move us towards a more grounded and institutional design driven ‘political political theory’, which is motivated to rebuild more just, equal, and free institutions beyond the narrowly defined existing notions of private property and state.

My research focuses on the elite discursive construction of migrants and citizens within England and Scotland at a national and sub-state level. In particular, I aim to explore how communities (and thus belonging) is created at different spatial levels, and how identity translates across these. In doing so, I hope to shed light on how belonging is varied across Britain.