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Members

Malik Hammad Ahmad · Miranda Alison · Ana Aliverti · David Anderson · Katherine Astbury · James Baldwin · Alexander Blanchard · Daniel Branch · Jennifer Crane · Stuart Croft · Jonathan Davies · Jennifer Eggert · Nicholas Gane · Simon Gilson · Joachim Häberlen · Anna Hájková · Oz Hassan · Charlotte Heath-Kelly · Nick Hewlett · Nike Jung · Philippe Le Goff · David Lines · Gabrielle Lynch · Hilary Marland · Christoph Mick · Solange Mouthaan · Mark Philp · Pierre Purseigle · Christopher Read · George Roberts · Penny Roberts · Benjamin Smith · Victor Tadros · Charles Walton · Andrew Williams

Malik Hammad Ahmad (History, University of Warwick)

m dot h dot ahmad at warwick dot ac dot uk

Sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust, my PhD thesis is on nonviolent civil resistance movements in Pakistan 1977-88. The history of nonviolence and peace are the foci of my research interests. I would also like to investigate how violence takes control of Realpolitik and begets violence. I am the Director (International Coordination) of the Institute of Peace and Diplomatic Studies and Special Assignment Editor for The Diplomatic Insight (Pakistan). I also run an annual summer school on Peace Education with the collaboration of ILEWASI, a local NGO, in Castellon, Spain. I have worked in government and non-government organisations to mitigate domestic violence and discriminatory laws against women from Pakistan.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Miranda Alison (Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick)

miranda dot alison at warwick dot ac dot uk

My research interests lie primarily in the broad field of gender and war with a specific focus on ethno-national conflict and political violence. I also have an ongoing commitment to research in the area of wartime sexual violence and other gender-based human rights violations. I am interested in the intersections between armed conflict, development and security. I also have an interest in the intersection between ethnicity and politics more widely and would be keen to undertake some research in future on ethnicity and conflict in diaspora communities.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Ana Aliverti (Law, University of Warwick)

a dot aliverti at warwick dot ac dot uk

My research examines past and contemporary practices of migration control, with a particular focus on Britain. My current research focuses on two streams: first, criminal justice and citizenship; and second, inland border policing. In relation to the first stream, I am currently starting a project on two criminal courts in Birmingham, funded by the British Academy, with the aim of assessing the influence of citizenship and immigration status in criminal justice decision making. The second stream concerns the examination of contemporary policing practices in the context of mass mobility. It relates to the ways in which migration policing work permeates the work of the police and how a range of ‘third parties’ are increasingly co-opted into migration law enforcement. I have written on criminalisation, human rights, and migration. My book Crimes of Mobility, an empirical and theoretical examination of immigration crimes, was co-awarded the 2014 British Society of Criminology Book Prize.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

David Anderson (History, University of Warwick)

d dot m dot anderson at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am interested in Africa post-1945 including torture, sexual violence, and resistance. I am also working on a comparison of resistance in North America and India, and on comparisons of imperial conflict in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Africa, Arabia, and South Asia. My teaching includes the module ‘Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion 1952-60’.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Katherine Astbury (French Studies, University of Warwick)

katherine dot astbury at warwick dot ac dot uk

I specialise in the cultural life of the French Revolution and the First Empire. I am particularly interested in the representation and spectacle of violence in the period. In 2012 I published a monograph entitled Narrative Responses to the Trauma of the French Revolution (Legenda) which demonstrated how seemingly traditional, sentimental literary texts reveal not only a surprising engagement with politics but also an internalised emotional response to the turbulence of the period. I used trauma theory as a way of exploring the apparent contradiction between the proliferation of non-political literary texts and the events of the Revolution. Through the narratives of established bestselling literary figures of the Ancien Régime (primarily Marmontel, Madame de Genlis and Florian), and the early works of first generation Romantics Madame de Staël and Chateaubriand, I traced how the Revolution shaped their writing, and how central the Terror is to our understanding of literary production of the 1790s.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

James Baldwin (History, Royal Holloway, University of London)

james dot baldwin at rhul dot ac dot uk

I work on the legal, social and political history of the Ottoman Empire, in particular the Ottoman province of Egypt. I am currently working on a project titled Law, Violence and Elite Politics in Eighteenth-Century Egypt, which explores the norms and practices surrounding violent conflict between elite political households and factions in Cairo. This research forms part of a broader interest in disputes and how they are conducted and settled through courts, mediation and violence. My work in legal history also touches on issues of crime, interpersonal violence and punishment.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Alexander Blanchard (Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary, University of London)

a dot blanchard at qmul dot ac dot uk

Research Interests

My PhD research is on the history of the concept of violence, and how its historical development both enables and constrains our thinking on violence as an ethical phenomenon. My particular focus is the intersection of events in the late sixties/early seventies and the use to which the concept was put by political activist and liberation groups and academics/public intellectuals at this time. I am also interested in how violence has worked as a motif in political theory and philosophy.

Daniel Branch (History, University of Warwick)

d dot p dot branch at warwick dot ac dot uk

Research Interests

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Jennifer Crane (History, University of Warwick)

j dot m dot crane at warwick dot ac dot uk

Throughout the post-war period Britons have been increasingly concerned about, and keen to prevent, child abuse. My doctoral thesis considers how child protection policy first emerged, and how policy has subsequently been shaped by discussions between central and local governments, media, public, radiologists, social workers, children's charities. I also analyse how adults who have themselves been affected by child abuse, often labelled 'victims' or 'survivors', have campaigned to change the social and political conceptions of abuse. My research is funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Stuart Croft (Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick)

s dot croft at warwick dot ac dot uk

My research focuses on the political and societal impact of security policy. My publications in that field include the books Securitizing Islam and Culture, Crisis and America's War on Terror. I am the series editor for Palgrave’s New Security Challenges list and until 2004 I was co-editor of Contemporary Security Policy. I currently direct the Science and Security Programme for the ESRC and from 2003 to 2010 I was director of the New Security Challenges Programme, which included a two-year, £2.4 million programme examining concepts and practices of radicalization, funded by the ESRC, the AHRC, and the UK Foreign Office. I have also worked on ESRC-funded projects on media representations of the war in Iraq and on the future of NATO.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Jonathan Davies (History, University of Warwick)

j dot d dot davies at warwick dot ac dot uk

My research focuses on violence in early modern Italy, especially Tuscany and particularly involving students and professors. This violence includes assaults, duels, murders, rapes, and riots. I am also interested in verbal violence, definitions of violence, and responses to violence. I am the editor of Aspects of Violence in Renaissance Europe (Farnham, 2013). Together with Penny Roberts, I teach the module ‘Violence in Early Modern Europe’.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Jennifer Eggert (PAIS, Univeristy of Warwick)

J dot P dot Eggert at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am a PhD Candidate in the Department of Politics and International Studies. My research, which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), focuses on non-state political violence, female combatants and organisational decision-making. As part of my PhD project, I examine the reasons why some non-state violent political organisanisations / militias that were involved in the Lebanese civil war (1975 - 1990) employed female fighters whereas others involved women in supportive roles only. I am also interested in and have worked on other contemporary and historical conflicts and non-state armed groups, such as the current conflict in Syria, the so-called "Islamic State", Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Taleban in Afghanistan as well as the Sri Lankan LTTE.

Nicholas Gane (Sociology, University of Warwick)

N dot Gane at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am currently writing a history of neoliberalism that traces its emergence to the inter-war years of the 1920s and 1930s. My research explores an alternative history of neoliberalism that treats it as a response to the ideas of classical sociologists such as Auguste Comte, Max Weber and Alfred Schutz. I have previously worked extensively on the political sociology of Max Weber, and continue to be interested in his definition of the state as a body which exercises a monopoly of the means of violence within a given territory. I am also interested in Pierre Bourdieu’s recently published lectures on the state, which argue that state violence is both physical and symbolic in form.

Simon Gilson (Italian Studies, University of Warwick)

s dot gilson at warwick dot ac dot uk

I specialize in Dante, Dante's reception, and Renaissance Italian literary, cultural and intellectual history. My interests in Dante encompass representations of violence in the 'Comedy', and cultural and literary polemics in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, with particular reference to the quarrel over Dante and other authors, the Plato-Aristotle controversy, editorial rivalries in print culture, interregional competition and conflict (especially between Florence and Venice). I am working on a book on the sixteenth-century critical reception of Dante.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Joachim Häberlen (History, University of Warwick)

j dot haeberlen at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am interested in the joys of violence: the excitement of a boxing match, the arousal of consensual sexual violence (e.g. in SM practices), or the cheering during a riot. Instead of basing my investigations into (historical) violence on the premise that violence has to be overcome, I wonder what it is that makes violence fun, and how this changes throughout history. To this end, I try to relate questions of (bodily) feelings in situations of violence with questions of power relations that are challenged and called into question in such situations. Simply speaking about violence ‘as such’, without paying careful attention to the complicated power relations at play in specific situations of violence, does not make sense for me. From my perspective, violence has to involve the body, and so do histories of violence. I am thus interested in methodological approaches that reintegrate body, as an agent of violence as much as the object of violence, into historical analyses.

Recent Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Anna Hájková (History, University of Warwick)

anna dot hajkova at warwick dot ac dot uk

I received my PhD from the University of Toronto in 2013, with a dissertation on the everyday history of the Theresienstadt ghetto, which was awarded the 2014 Irma Rosenberg prize. From 2006 to 2009, I was coeditor of Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente, and I also co-edited Alltag im Holocaust: Jüdisches Leben im Großdeutschen Reich, 1941-1945 (Oldenbourg, 2013). I have published on various aspects of Terezín, the Holocaust in the Netherlands, and issues of music, gender and sexuality, and ethnicity. I am the recipient of the Catharine Stimpson Prize for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship 2013. My current project, Dreamers of a New Day: Building Socialism in Central Europe, 1930-1970, examines the generational history of socialism in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany. In addition, I am also working on the intersection of sexuality experienced as extreme in the Holocaust and the boundaries of memory and the survivors’ narratives.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Oz Hassan (Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick)

o dot a dot hassan at warwick dot ac dot uk

My research focuses on Transatlantic relations with the Middle East and North Africa, with a particular emphasis on security issues and political reform. I am working on my ESRC Future Research Leaders project entitled Transatlantic Interests and Democratic Possibility in a Transforming Middle East (2013-2016), which looks at the "conflict of interests" between US and EU policy across the region. I am also a visiting scholar in the Democracy and Rule of Law Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington D.C., and an Associate on the United States International Affairs Programme at LSE IDEAS. I have published on a range of issues related to violence, including terrorism, counter-terrorism, nuclear proliferation, violent political transitions and state violence amongst others.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Charlotte Heath-Kelly (Institute for Advanced Studies/Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick)

c dot heath-kelly at warwick dot ac dot uk

My research interests revolve around questions of violence, security and politicality. Across the areas of militancy, memorialisation and counter-terrorism, I have researched how violence is connected to (and threatening for) the performance of sovereignty. In my PhD research I interviewed ex-militants from Italian and Cypriot campaigns to explore the destruction and rescripting of politics and authority through hurting and killing the body. Political authority could be unwritten through sudden unexpected destruction, in the explanations of ex-militants. Since then, and in the British context, I have explored how ideas and discourses of ‘radicalisation’ enable states to remove politicality from the threat of terrorism and instead treat it as a quasi-medical, quasi-racial problem of ‘vulnerability’. This depoliticisation enables states to avoid discussion of their foreign policies with regard to terrorist resistance, as well as enabling the unquestioned continuance of the status quo on the international stage. In my most recent British Academy funded work, I have explored the performance of ‘resilience’ to terrorism through memory and design. I am currently writing-up this research as a monograph for Manchester University Press entitled ‘Death and Security’.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Nick Hewlett (French Studies, University of Warwick)

n dot p dot hewlett at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am working on a book regarding the ethics of violence in the course of insurrection. In situations deemed (by the participants in revolt) to be legitimate, how can it be determined which methods are justifiable and which are not? This is a question which has preoccupied many revolutionaries, such as Lenin, Trotsky, Luxembourg and Castro, together with other writers such as Fanon, Sartre and Serge. I argue, however, that a new look at the question is needed, which takes a rather different approach and puts the politics of peace centre stage.

Recent Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Nike Jung (Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick)

nikejung at gmail dot com

In my research project I aim to explore how recent fiction films imagine and narrate torture cases based on factual events, and how over- and underexposure of these events in the media may influence their fictional portrayal. To this end my study objects represent opposing poles in terms of media treatment: on the one hand, US fiction films “digesting“ the Abu Ghraib images, on the other hand contemporary Chilean films coping with the legacy of torture.

I am particularly interested in the ways in which fiction film positions itself in relation to other media, and to an abundance or lack of documentary evidence. These films construct images and narratives for events which continue to shape political, cultural and social realities.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Philippe Le Goff (French Studies and History, University of Warwick)

p dot j dot le-goff at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am writing writing a Ph.D. thesis on the the praxis of Auguste Blanqui. I am interested in political violence, especially the revolutions in Paris. Together with Nick Hewlett, I have taught the module ‘Politics and Violence in Modern France’. I was co-organiser of the conference ‘Living in Violent Times’, University of Warwick, April 2013.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

David Lines (Italian Studies, University of Warwick)

d dot a dot lines at warwick dot ac dot uk

Much of my work centres on real or perceived cultural conflicts in Renaissance Europe, for instance between humanists and scholastics, university and non-university culture, Latin and the vernacular, manuscript vs. print, and Aristotelianism vs. other currents of thought. I am also very interested in the ways in which conflict has been treated within political theory, by Machiavelli and other authors, and by the ways in which political struggles are reflected in the cultural and institutional history of universities. Currently I am writing a history of the dynamics of learning in the Faculty of Arts and Medicine in the University of Bologna, c. 1405-1713.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Gabrielle Lynch (Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick)

g dot lynch at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am chair of the Review of African Political Economy editorial working group and I write a twice-monthly column in the Saturday Nation (the Saturday edition of Kenya’s leading national newspaper). My research interests include ethnic politics, elections and democratisation, and reconciliation and transitional justice mechanisms, which has involved conducting extensive research on election-related violence and responses to the same in contemporary Kenya.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Hilary Marland (History, University of Warwick)

hilary dot marland at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am currently contributing to a volume on violence in history. My essay engages with my previous research on women and mental illness within closed institutions, but considering how the manifestations of violence challenge ideas not only of maternity and femininity but of female power, strength and expression. I will also be investigating violence in my new project ‘Prisoners, Medical Care and Entitlement to Health in England and Ireland, 1850-2000’.

Christoph Mick (History, University of Warwick)

c dot mick at warwick dot ac dot uk

I have interests in war, the experience of occupation, war trauma, war remembrance, inter-ethnic violence, anti-semitism, and inter-war collective violence.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Solange Mouthaan (Law, University of Warwick)

s dot mouthaan at warwick dot ac dot uk

My research interests are related to issues of effectiveness in protecting individuals from the consequences of armed conflict. In particular, I examine the prosecution of gender-based crimes, crimes of sexual violence and crimes against children by international criminal tribunals such as the International Criminal Court.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Mark Philp (History, University of Warwick)

mark dot philp at warwick dot ac dot uk

My research includes work in political theory and political sociology, most recently on political corruption and issues relating to standards in public life, as well as in the history of political thought and British history at the time of the French Revolution. I am currently working on issues relating to political conduct and corruption, the re-imaging of democracy at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, political realism and political ethics, all of which raise issues about the character of violence, political and ethical evaluations of violence, and the place of violence in the emergence of modern political orders.

Recent Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Pierre Purseigle (History, University of Warwick)

p dot purseigle at warwick dot ac dot uk

My research to date has focused on the comparative history of the First World War and especially on the experience of the French, British, and – to a lesser extent – Belgian populations. I have researched and published on wartime mobilization, the experience of refugees, and on cultural responses to war violence.

I am currently writing on the transformations of the belligerent state in the era of the Great War and on the historiography of the First World War. My new research project investigates the reconstruction and demobilization of belligerent societies after the conflict.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Christopher Read (History, University of Warwick)

c dot j dot read at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am interested in revolutionary violence in 1917, definitions of violence, everyday violence, the ideological use of violence, and anthropological and structural aspects of violence. My teaching includes the modules ‘The Russian Revolution 1914-21’ and ‘The Furies of Revolution’ (with Charles Walton). I am a Senior Editor on the Russia's Great War and Revolution international ​publishing project which has almost 300 contributors globally and will produce 15 books of current research.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

George Roberts (Trinity College, Cambridge)

gr316 at cam dot ac dot uk

My research focuses on the history of the Cold War in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. My project takes a multiarchival approach to the development of international politics in a city which found itself at the intersection of superpower rivalry in Africa and the ongoing struggles for decolonisation in the continent. I am also interested in the dynamics of international affairs and conflict between African states after independence, and I have published work on the Uganda-Tanzania War of 1978-9. My work also addresses the use of state-sponsored terrorism and extrajudicial killing, within the broad context of contemporary African history and the Cold War.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Penny Roberts (History, University of Warwick)

penny dot roberts at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am principally interested in the violence arising from confessional conflict during the Reformation, in particular in France during its religious wars (c.1560-1600). I have explored various social and cultural manifestations of violence in sixteenth-century France, including disputes over burial and sites of worship, sexual and other forms of physical assault, popular revolts, arson and conspiracy. I have focused much of my recent research on attempts to resolve civil conflict, which might in turn result in violence, and certainly the interrelationship between peace and violence has proved striking. These interests have fed directly into my teaching, both for my third-year Special Subject, 'Religious Conflict and Civil War in France, c. 1560-1600' and the MA module 'Violence in early modern Europe'.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Benjamin Smith (History, University of Warwick)

b dot smith dot 1 at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am a historian of modern Mexican grassroots politics. My research interests include the place of violence in modern state making and the historical emergence of non-state actors involved in parainstitutional or grey zone violence. One of my current research projects, on the history of the drug trade in modern Mexico, examines the often violent relationships among state officials, drug traffickers and broader society. Another more long term project, which looks at the infamous Poquianchis murder case, examines public notions of murder, gender, and prostitution during the Cold War.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Victor Tadros (Law, University of Warwick)

v dot tadros at warwick dot ac dot uk

I work in the philosophy of criminal law, just war theory, and on a range of issues in moral, legal and political philosophy. I am the author of Criminal Responsibility (OUP, 2005) and, with Antony Duff, Lindsay Farmer and Sandra Marshall, The Trial on Trial vol.3: Towards a Normative Theory of the Criminal Trial (Hart, 2007). My most recent book is The Ends of Harm: The Moral Foundations of Criminal Law, which is concerned with the philosophy of punishment, and its relationship to the problem of intentional harming, and to the philosophy of self-defence. I have edited six books, and I am currently working on a book entitled Wrongs and Crimes for OUP. From 2010-13 I held an AHRC Research Grant, with Antony Duff, Lindsay Farmer, Sandra Marshall and Massimo Renzo, to work on criminalization.

I am the holder of a three year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to work on just war theory entitled To Do, To Die, To Reason Why.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Charles Walton (History, University of Warwick)

charles dot walton at warwick dot ac dot uk

My research focuses on radicalisation and violence in the context of the French Revolution. I have explored how the Terror (1793-1794) phase of the Revolution grew out of a combination of cultural processes stretching back to the Old Regime and contingent institutional breakdown after 1789. Included among the cultural processes I consider are vengeance (could justice be expressed through popular vengeance or only the law?), honour (should laws protect it by limiting freedom of expression?) and redistribution (should authorities redistribute to win allegiances and prevent violence or should the economy be bracketed off from politics and left to self-regulating market forces?).

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

Andrew Williams (Law, University of Warwick)

a dot t dot williams at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am primarily interested in the legal response to institutional violence: in other words where violence is perpetrated as a condition and perhaps culture of an organisation or group. Over the last 10 years I have written on the British Army’s interrogation and detention practices in Iraq and how the Government and the law has dealt with torture and abuse and unlawful killing by British forces. I published A Very British Killing: the Death of Baha Mousa which won the 2013 George Orwell Prize. I’m now working on a book about the criminal process operated by the British at the end of WW2. I work with the Writing Programme in the English Department and teach a Creative Non-Fiction module on writing about violence and injustice.

Publications, Conferences, and Projects

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