Reader in International Politics

BA (Oxford), MA, PhD (Nottingham)

Career background

I joined the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester in September 2011. I was educated at Oxford University (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) and Nottingham University where I took an MA in International Relations with distinction in the School of Politics. I was then jointly funded by the School of Politics and the University of Nottingham to research my PhD on the historiography of British European policy since 1945. From 2000-2005 I lectured in the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London. From 2005-2011 I was Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer at Loughborough University’s Department of Politics, History and International Relations. In 2010/11 I was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for British Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Research interests

I have three interconnected research interests: firstly, British foreign policy since 1945; secondly discourses of Euroscepticism in Britain; and thirdly critical historiography, which breaks down into two specialisms: historical theory and how politicians use and abuse history in making foreign policy. I am co-founder of the British International Studies Association’s Working Group on Interpretivism in International Relations, with Mark Bevir (University of California) and Ian Hall (Australian National University).
I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and am a full member of the following professional associations: European Union Studies Association, British International Studies Association, University Association for Contemporary European Studies and the Political Studies Association.

Teaching and supervision

At Leicester I teach the Year 2 module, International Theory (PL2015). I have supervised PhD students working in the fields of the language of European counter-terrorism policy, humanitarian intervention, narratives of international education and historical theory. I am keen to supervise new students across the range of my research interests, particularly in British foreign policy under New Labour, interpretivist International Relations and discourse analysis.

If you are interested in applying to work with me, in the first instance please email me and check out the department’s postgraduate study pages for details on how to apply to undertake PhD research at Leicester.

Publications

Books

New Labour and the European Union: Blair and Brown’s Logic of History, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2011

British Foreign Policy: The New Labour Years (co-edited with Jamie Gaskarth), Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

International Relations Theory, London, Sage, 2009

Britain and Europe since 1945: Historiographical Perspectives on Integration, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004

Harold Wilson and European Integration: Britain’s Second Application to Join the EEC, London, Frank Cass, 2003

Publications - Journal articles (select)

‘Half Remembered Quotations from Mostly Forgotten Speeches: The Limits of Labour’s European Policy Discourse’, with Matthew Broad, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 12/2 (2010), pp.205-222

‘“Tony’s War?” Blair, Kosovo and the Interventionist Impulse in British Foreign Policy’, International Affairs, 85/3 (2009), pp.547-60

‘Playing Games with History: Tony Blair’s European Policy in the Press’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 9/4 (2007), pp.582-98

‘Euroscepticism and the Culture of the Discipline of History’, Review of International Studies, 32/2 (2006), pp. 309-28

‘The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism’, Rethinking History, 8/3 (2004), pp.437-57