My research asks how popular culture helps us imagine political futures.

Whether its zombie movies informing our reaction to the Covid 19 pandemic or social media defining our counterterrorism narrative, I am fascinated by the dialogue that exists between our imagined and actual political futures.

I have spent time analysing this relationship and thinking about the issues that inform it - embodiment, security, silence, power. Now I find myself moving into a different phase as a researcher, when I actively try to engage with these processes in the political realm. Exciting times!

Current Projects

  • The world order has been turned on its head and the imagined political futures many sovereign nations have imagined and planned for no longer apply.

    In this project I am interrogating how UK political futures are imagined, what relationship they have with popular culture, and how we might improve these processes in the future.

    This is the project I am working on at the moment, which I am really excited to learn and think more about.

  • In this collaboration with Dr Stefanie Fishel we explored ways world politics generates a long list of anxiety inspiring scenarios that threaten to unravel everyday life with sudden and violent destruction. From total war and the concentration camps, through nuclear firestorms, global pandemics, and climate disaster, the diabolical violence of the recent past and conceivable future is the stuff of nightmares. The challenge for both policy practitioners and researchers is to engage world politics in a way that foregrounds human consequences.

    This is the research I reference most in my teaching, as students really connect with the horror genre and its embodied potential.

  • This transdisciplinary research project explores the connection between Trump’s twitter images and the capitol hill riots. What values did the images communicate? And how might those images have indicated the trajectory of events that took place?

    I am developed this project with Dr Constance Duncombe and Camille Serisier. It is exciting to be thinking about historic event in a different way.

Past Projects

  • Conspiracies play a significant role in world politics. States often engage in covert operations. They plot in secret, with and against each other.

    While exploring this intriguing topic I developed my first book and a series of articles, including a co-authored piece with Professor Roland Bleiker.

    It is probably the research I am asked the most often about, as everyone has a little curiosity about conspiracy theories. Do they exist? Yes. Did the USA land on the moon? I have no idea. But it is a powerful way to deligitimise a whole country and its efforts to conquer space.