Critical Global Politics

We bring together scholars undertaking cutting-edge research on issues that face global politics.

Our recent research includes an ESRC funded project on Immigration and the Transformation of Chinese Society, led by Elena Barabantseva, and Maja Zehfuss’s book “War and the Politics of Ethics” which received an Honourable Mention for the BISA Susan Strange Prize.

Members of the cluster research critical approaches in:

  • security;
  • conflict;
  • migration;
  • war;
  • gender;
  • ethics;
  • environmental politics;
  • peace (keeping and building);
  • resistance;
  • international institutions;
  • China and the Far East; and
  • knowledge production.

Our commitment to critical thinking drives us to ask big questions:  

  • What does it mean to live in a secured world?
  • What does it mean to live in a nation-state and do nation-states still matter in modern global politics?
  • How has technology reshaped the face of modern war? Can ethics and politics reconcilable?
  • What constitutes a legitimate political action?
  • What is the power and political significance of marginalized and excluded political groups?
  • Is gender still a powerful political category?
  • What is the role of academics in knowledge production and policy advising?

These are just some of the topics discussed in our seminars, roundtables, workshops and conferences.

Our people

Postgraduate Researchers

Associates and Alumni

Jennifer Hobbs 2020: ‘Bodily Fluids and Queer Feminist Curiosity : Exploring the Distribution of Life-Death in Biopolitical Security Assemblages’

Kai Heron, 2015-2019. “Many Struggles, One Fight:” Deleuze, Guattari, Lacan, and the US Anti-Fracking Movement’

Muhammad Rakhmat: ‘Examining the implications of the Silk Road initiatives and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on China-GCC relations’

Michanne Steenbergen – ‘Women ex-combatants and post-conflict insecurity: Examining the paradox between empowerment in conflict and post-war (re-)marginalization in Sierra Leone and Liberia’

Henrique Tavares Furtado - ‘The politics of remembering terror: a temporal analysis of the Brazilian National Commission of Truth’

Sabrina Villenave – ‘Enforced Disappearances in Brazil: A military Regime Pheonomenon?’

Andrew Slack ‘Doing something about Modern Slavery: Scenes of Responsibility, Practices of Hospitality’.