Areas of Supervision

• Linguistic nationalism in India or Pakistan, either at the national or the state/provincial level
• The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor - especially in relation to Special Economic Zones
• The Digital Silk Road or agriculture
• Religious majoritarianism in India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka

• Ethnic minority political behaviour
• British politics
• Brexit
• Immigration
• Race and Racism

• Democratization, political parties, elections, political institutions, and mobilization in Africa and other world regions
• Conflict management and counter-insurgency in Africa (particularly the Sahel region)
• Any topic in Francophone Africa, Nigeria, and Uganda. 

• Resistance to neo-liberal globalisation 
• Trade unions and transnational solidarity
• European integration and political economy
• Historical materialist IR theory

History of (Western) philosophy and political thought:

1. History of political though - natural law theory, or the history of the concept of natural law; the history of concepts more generally, together with the methodological issues associated with studying them
2. The philosophy and political thought of Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition
3. The philosophy and political thought of G.W.F Hegel and Karl Marx
4. The history of political thought, with special reference to utopian/dystopian thought and literature

• British party politics
• Political leadership
• UK Parliament
• Neoliberalism

• Party system closure/stability and party institutionalisation
• Political party (funding) regulation
• Democratisation and democracy promotion

• The political economy of authoritarian regimes
• African political economy, focus on eastern Africa
• Urban politics and labour organising in the urban informal economy

• Intelligence
• Covert operations (propaganda, political influence, sabotage, subversion)

• European Union and European integration
• Legislative politics and political parties
• Gender and political representation
• Individual backgrounds and career paths
• Digital campaigning and social media
• Mixed method research designs using bespoke sources of data

• British public policy
• Conservatism and Conservative Party politics
• Political Biography
• Party leadership selection in British politics

• Nietzsche's politics
• Democratic theory 
• Liberalism 
• Centrism
• Conspiracy theories

• Human or critical security, including terrorism
• Environmental issues
• Disaster relief and resilience in the aftermath of disasters
• Philippines: any topic
• Work informed by the writings of Karl Polanyi and the Copenhagen School

• Social science methodology
• Elections, public opinion and political parties (single and comparative)
• Public probity (especially Committee on Standards in Public Life)

• Quantitative research methods
• Legislative institutions
• Elite behaviour
• Political parties, elections, and electoral institutions
• Conscription policy and wartime domestic politics

• Democratic security
• Hybrid interference by autocratic regimes
• Sino-German relations
• Academic freedom
• Citizen diplomacy

• European Union - foreign policy, defence integration, security (CFSP and ESDP)
• EU trade, aid and development policies
• EU-NATO-UN relations
• EU-US economic and political relations
• EU and Africa
• European International Politics
• Theories of European Integration
• European Union Politics

Professor David Gill

• The uses of history in International Relations 
• Western alliances during the Cold War 
• The politics of sovereign debt and default

• Developing accurate measures of political corruption
• Effective strategies to combat political corruption
• The international anti-corruption movement and its impact

• The history of political thought, especially 17th/18th centuries
• The concept of the state
• The concept of sovereignty
• Intellectual history of International Relations
• Political theology

Professor Mathew Humphrey

• Political ideology/ideologies 
• Theories of ideology
• Environmental political theory 
• The politics of motorcycling/powered two-wheeled transport  

Dr Louise Kettle

• British foreign policy (especially in relation to the Middle East)
• British military interventions in the Middle East 
• UK-Iran relations
• The Iraq War 
• The use of the past in contemporary policy-making

• Concept development (re-signifying and developing existing concepts such as domination, freedom and control)
• Continental political theory/post-structuralism
• Populism/Post-truth politics
• Contemporary democratic theory

• Religion and international relations
• Political discrimination and violence
• Civil wars and armed conflict
• Insurgency and counter-insurgency

• Economic sanctions
• Political violence
• Quantitative methods in the study of international relations

• Governance and institutional reform, including crisis management and ideological formulation
• Authoritarianism, political stability and protests
• Elite politics and leadership
• Democratisation and political reform
• Ethnic policy
• Religious policy and religious activities
• Economic diplomacy
• China's soft power
• China's international relations
• China's international political economy
• Linkage between domestic and external politics (and political economy)
• China's energy security and energy diplomacy
• China's energy policy and energy sector
• Regional developmental programs, especially western development, central regional development, and northeast revival
• Political economy of economic reform and transition
• Central-local relations

• Political economy
• Innovation and supply chain
• China-Taiwan relations
• China's impact on the global economy
• Comparative studies of Taiwan

• The history of European political thought, especially the 17th, 18th and 20th centuries 
• Contemporary democratic theory
• Constitutional theory 
• The concept of peoplehood
• The political thought of revolution

• UK intelligence community
• Diplomacy and intelligence
• Public perceptions of intelligence
• Intelligence theory and practice 

Peace and Conflict Studies:

• Causes and legacies of armed conflict
• Continuities of conflict, crisis and everyday violence
• Gender, conflict and peace
• Post-conflict Transitional Justice, Peacebuilding and Reconciliation (International Justice mechanisms, Truth Commissions, Local Processes)
• Justice and Legal systems in Africa
• Gender

Development Politics:

• Sexual and Gender-based Violence, Continuum of Violence, Everyday violence
• National and local politics in relation to women
• De-colonial/Decolonizing politics
• Popular Culture

Humour, cartoons and politics:

• Arts-based methodologies

Any topic related to Sierra Leone

• Turkish politics and foreign policy
• Turkey-EU relations
• News media freedom and liberal democracy
• Information and security

• Forced marriage
• John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor and Helen Taylor

• Racism within counterterrorism in Europe and/or North America 
• White supremacist (far-right) violence in Germany, the US, or the UK
• Coloniality and counterterrorism 
• Memory culture in Germany and/or the US vis-à-vis racism and atrocities

• Comparative European politics
• Public administration, public policy and anti-corruption in Europe and in developing countries

• Electoral systems
• Public opinion and voting behaviour
• Elections and campaigns in Britain
• Quantitative research methods

• Quantitative methods
• Agent based models 
• Game-theoretic / social choice theoretic models of legislatures 

• Proxy Wars
• Counter-insurgency warfare
• Sub-state violence
• Anglo-American security and foreign policy

• International politics and south-east Europe
• International politics and literature
• Academic freedom

• US-European security cooperation since the end of the Cold War
• Contemporary British security and defence policy
• Anglo-American relations
• Cooperation among Western countries against terrorism

• Causes of war and peace
• Climate ethics
• Intergenerational justice

• Russian foreign, security and defence policy
• Contemporary strategy and airpower

• Gender, public policy, and state institutions
• Gender and political representation/participation
• Feminist politics of development/gender and political economy
• Democratic politics and political economy of development in India and South Asia more widely

• Liberal egalitarian political theory
• Rawlsian political philosophy
• The overlap of normative political philosophy and the philosophy of education

• Chinese politics and foreign relations
• Taiwanese politics and cross-Strait relations
• Chinese political communications and media
• Digital politics, celebrity and popular culture
• Chinese football
• UK-China relations
• Any other projects more broadly located within Chinese and Taiwanese politics, foreign relations, the internet and media, issues surrounding China's expanding global presence and UK-Taiwan relations

• The ways parties compete over the issue of regional authority and decentralisation
• Constitutional reforms in decentralised and federal multinational states
• Nationalist, independentist and sovereigntist parties and movements
• Regional-level policy-making and policy coordination, in particular in the face of crises (economic, public health, climate change related crises)
• The way voters hold parties in government at different levels responsible for policy outcomes

• Modern slavery

• Elections and campaigns 
• Representation and political participation
• Legislative politics and political parties 
• Political communication
• British politics
• Eastern European politics

• Campaign strategy and effects (in particular negative campaigning)
• Media (news effects, media amplification, fake news)
• Political psychology (emotions, moral principles, personality traits)
• Quantitative research methods (experiments, content analysis, survey design)

• Developing qualitative-interpretive approaches to the study of politics
• Research methods in the PIR curriculum
• Political Communication, particularly questions of representation
• Politics and popular culture/entertainment

• Immigration
• Comparative politics
• European politics