pathway: Political Sciences and International Studies Alumni

It is widely acknowledged that the far right has enjoyed increased success over recent years in Europe. However, a focus on electoral gains has led to misperceptions about the extent and nature of its impact. Discursive studies have largely investigated on how far-right parties have ‘softened’ their rhetoric to appear less extreme. While this internal strategy is important, mainstreaming is more complex, and there is a need to shift the focus towards the system in which far-right parties, or more specifically their ideas, are allowed to flourish. My PhD explores the role of mainstream elites within politics, the media and academia in creating this receptive environment.

My research explores the differing conceptions of human need that have emerged from the work of Marx, and in the Marxist canon. By developing a distinctive new perspective on human need, I will be seeking to address problems in the contemporary philosophy of needs, as well as identifying applications.

Drawing on public and declassified documents, my research tracks the construction of the “Chinese Space Threat” in US policy discourses from 1958 to the present. I particularly focus on China’s so-called “rise in space,” a concept used by American observers to contextualise events since 2000. This has included the launch of China’s first person into space and the demonstration of a series of technologies with the potential to be used as “space weapons.” Using a theoretical approach which combines insights from Critical Security and Science and Technology Studies, my project explores the technopolitics which constitute the official US response to China’s “new” technical capabilities.

Only a small percentage of citizens in advanced industrial democracies are members of a political party; the numbers have largely been declining over the last five decades. Current knowledge tells us that the minority who do join have five dimensions of incentives for doing so, some being more popular than others. Yet, when a party experiences an acute period of expansion in its memberbase, do peoples’ incentives for joining change? Are different kinds of people attracted? How does this affect the party and wider society? Using advanced statistical methods, supplemented with qualitative interviews and content analysis, the project aims to answers these questions.

My research focuses on prominent campaigns that advocate investing in young women in developing countries and posit girls’ education as the solution to global poverty.

I am a PhD candidate based in the Department of Politics. My research lies at the intersection of political thought, ethics, and philosophy of biology, focusing on the relationships between political/ethical thinking and the ways in which we conceive of the living world and the place of humanity within it.

My current research centres on the concept of capability (à la the ‘capability approach’ of Sen and Nussbaum), as a point through which to critically discuss political concepts such as freedom, power, and individual and social development, and their relations to our understanding of life and nature.

My thesis focuses on social and political change and the construction of peace from the grassroots, taking Lebanon as a country of study. My research examines cases where the sectarian system is contested and challenged through forms of quiet and ordinary resistance on the ground. I work on the premise that there are cases experiencing on-going and intrinsic processes that may potentially work as platforms of social change and conflict transformation.