Loughborough University

Faculty Member, Politics, History & International Relations

Lecturer in Politics

Loughborough University

About

I joined the Department in 2007 from the Department of Politics, University of Bristol where I had been  an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Post-Doctoral Fellow and Visiting Lecturer. I have a BA (Hons) in History and Politics from the University of Exeter and an MSc with Distinction in International Relations from the University of Bristol. I was awarded a PhD in Politics by Rhodes University, South Africa.

Research Interests

My general research interests are:

    * South African politics and society
    * Masculinities and international politics
    * Gender studies and feminist politics
    * Post-Colonial Politics and Development
    * Sexuality and Queer Theory
    * Popular Culture and Politics
    * Militarisation
    * Peace Movements
    * Whiteness and Race Politics
    * Political Sociology

My research agenda pursues inter-related aspects of political sociology, militarisation, peace, gender, race and popular culture in International Relations and Politics. As such, I am firstly interested in post-structural theories of International Relations with particular reference to gendered and feminist approaches. I am also interested in discourses of sexuality and as a disciplinary project and counter struggles by individuals and movements for peace, justice and human rights. I have three main research themes:


Contesting the Masculine State: Masculinities, Militarisation and War Resistance in Apartheid South Africa

This project analyses competing discourses of masculinity and citizenship between South African white male political objectors to compulsory conscription, their supporters in the End Conscription Campaign (ECC) and the apartheid state. I am particularly interested in the intersections between gender, sexuality and militarisation and conceptualise military service and objection to it as performative acts generative of political subjectivities. I have a number of publications relating to this project and am currently working on a monograph entitled Contesting the Masculine State: Masculinities, Militarisation and War Resistance in Apartheid South Africa for Manchester University Press. I explore heteronormative discourses of sexuality and race in a forthcoming article entitled ‘Queering Apartheid: The National Party’s 1987 ‘Gay Rights’ Election Campaign in Hillbrow’ which was published in December 2009 in the Journal of Southern African Studies. This article analyses the shifting conceptualisations of heteronormativity in late-apartheid white society, the collapse spatial management of race and the attempts by the apartheid regime to reorder whiteness and assimilate white gay men into the National Party’s constituency.


South African Migration to the UK and the British in South Africa

The second research theme develops my research from an historical period in South Africa to contemporary international understandings of gender, whiteness and citizenship. I have been awarded a British Academy Research Grant (in collaboration with Dr Pauline Leonard, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton) to study ‘The British in South Africa: Continuity or Change’. This research will involve interviewing British-born expatriates in South Africa in 2011.

I am  also working with Dr Charlotte Lemanski in the Department of Geography, University College London on developing a project entitled ‘South African Migration to the UK: Exploring Dynamics, Identities and Prospects’ and will hold a CSIG workshop on this topic in September 2010. This research will contribute to new categorisations of post-colonial migration and discourses of transnational identity. The research will inform contemporary debates on migration both in the UK and more generally on population movements between the ‘Global South’ and ‘Global North’. Dr Lemanski and I plan to undertake research on post-1994 migration from South Africa to the UK and will also undertake independent, yet interrelated, research on South African migrants. My personal focus will be on white men who have migrated to the UK from South Africa and to develop the concept of whiteness, masculinity, citizenship and migration.

My interest in whiteness as a sub-theme of racial studies has also been developed with Professor Melissa Steyn (University of Cape Town). We co-edited a special issue of the journal Ethnicities entitled ‘Intersecting Whiteness, Interdisciplinary Debates’ published in 2010.


Dress, Performativity and Politics/IR

The third research theme is in collaboration with Dr Jutta Weldes and focuses primarily on modes of dress and diplomacy as a form of ‘soft power’ with the empirical focus on Queen Elizabeth II’s evening gowns worn on state occasions, particularly on state visits. This research draws on a growing body of work in international relations, sociology, geography and fashion theory analysing dress, performativity, gendered embodiment and representations of nation. Dr Weldes and I are writing a paper entitled ‘Dressing up and Queening it’: Queen Elizabeth II, Dress and British Public Diplomacy‘. I am concurrently working on a single authored paper entitled ‘Margaret Thatcher, Dress and the Politics of Fashion’ which explores the strong and complex relationship Margaret Thatcher had with dress and appearance, the oft ignored relationship with women (notably her mother, personal assistant Cynthia Crawford and fashion adviser Margaret King) and the wider significance of dress, gendered embodiment and Britishness.

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