About me

I am an early career academic researcher, currently employed as ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Sheffield. My research explores the histories of British counter-terrorism and peacebuilding politics in Northern Ireland, 1920-1998. I am currently writing a book on this topic: situating evolutions in UK security practice during the ‘Troubles’ in relation to longer-term patterns of Anglo-Irish politics.

I completed my PhD in Politics at the University of Sheffield in 2023, having previously studied History at the University of Oxford and International Relations at the London School of Economics. Before beginning my PhD, I worked in the UK Parliament as a Researcher and Senior Caseworker. I have published articles on the histories of British security policy in journals including the European Journal of International Security, the Review of International Studies, and Critical Studies on Terrorism.

My work is informed by post-structuralist and genealogical traditions. I use mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative analysis to assess a blend of textual and spatial data. My wider interests include critical approaches to security; UK and Irish politics; and historical approaches to political science/international relations.

  • I have a mixed interdisciplinary background in history, political science, and international relations.

    I completed my PhD at the University of Sheffield from 2020 to 2023. My research was funded through a £99,000 ESRC studentship. My thesis explored British Government security policy during the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’. This included passage of the UK’s first-ever counter-terrorism laws (enacting provisions like stop-and-search, non-jury trial, and detention without charge), as well as the creation of novel peacebuilding schemes leading to the Good Friday Agreement.

    I am currently employed as ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Sheffield. I was awarded a grant of £130,000 under this fellowship, to develop my PhD research: including rewriting my thesis as book, publishing articles, and organising a public exhibition of visual research materials. This exhibition incorporates photographs of ‘peace walls’ built by British military and governmental actors in Northern Ireland during the Troubles - as well as data graphics visualising their effects for spatial mobility. The exhibition has now been viewed by over 33,000 people over three separate showcases. You can view a digital version of the exhibition materials via this link.

    Before beginning my PhD, I worked outside academia. I spent one year working for an international development consultancy, serving clients like Amnesty International, WWF, and Malaria No More. I then worked in the UK Parliament for three years, serving as Parliamentary Researcher and Senior Caseworker for two Labour MPs (including a shadow minister and a select committee chair).

  • My research explores the history of British security politics in Northern Ireland.

    I am currently writing a book assessing evolutions in UK security policy during the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’. These include the emergence of the UK’s first-ever counter-terrorism laws (encompassing provisions like stop-and-search or detention without charge), as well as the development of peacebuilding strategies leading to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. My book traces these policies’ roots across a longer history of Anglo-Irish politics. I argue that, instead of manifesting a rupture in norms, UK security policy during the Troubles actually represented the continuation of long-term patterns of British politics on Northern Ireland (and Ireland before partition).

    My book’s empirical materials are drawn from archival fieldwork in London and Belfast, as well as desk-based quantitative research. My book applies corpus linguistic methods of keyness and collocation analysis to a new database encompassing all UK parliamentary debates on Northern Ireland from 1920 (the year Northern Ireland was created under the Government of Ireland Act) to 1972 (the year Westminster assumed direct rule in Northern Ireland following suspension of devolved administration). Through this quantitative analysis, I have established the parameters and continuity of a system of logics for thinking/speaking about Northern Irish questions active in British political discourse over the first six decades of Northern Ireland’s existence existence. My book then deploys materials from the archives to trace connections between these long-term logics of British discourse on Northern Ireland, and schemes informing the design and delivery of Government counter-terrorism and peacebuilding during the Troubles.

    I have published my research in leading journals, including Review of International Studies, the European Journal of International Security, and Critical Studies on Terrorism (follow this link for access to these publications).

  • I have experience as a seminar leader, guest lecturer, and student mentor. I have taught a number of modules in the University of Sheffield’s departments of Politics and Journalism. And I have also given guest lectures at the University of Manchester and the University of Otago in New Zealand.

    Modules I have taught on include

    • International Relations: the World’s Wicked Problems (second-year undergraduate module);

    • Communication in Peacebuilding (postgraduate module);

    • Contemporary Global Security (postgraduate module);

    • British politics (first-year undergraduate module);

    • Politics of the Left: Past, Present and Future (second-year undergraduate module);

    • Methods of Political Analysis (second-year undergraduate module).

    Before entering academia, I also worked as a teacher in a secondary school in Reading. I taught history and politics. And I also led on creation of a community engagement project for the school - involving students being placed at neighbouring primary schools to support learning in maths and English.