In History, Dr Milan Pajic joins us as a fixed-term Lecturer in Medieval History. His current research is a multi-faceted study of the migration of artisans between England and Continental Europe in the late middle ages. He focuses on the fundamental historical questions surrounding the social, economic, cultural and political motivations for, and impacts of, migration – questions which remain crucial for contemporary societies. His latest book is Milan Pajic, Immigration, Integration and Economic Development: Flemish Textile Workers in England 1331-1400, Cambridge University Press, (2019).   

 

Prof Diane Urqhuart joins us as Professor of Gender History from the University of Liverpool. Among many publications, she is author of Irish Divorce: a History, which will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. This is the first history of Irish divorce. Spanning the island of Ireland over three centuries, it places the human experience of marriage breakdown centre stage to explore the impact of a highly restrictive and gendered law and its reform. It considers the accessibility of Irish divorce as it moved from a parliamentary process in Westminster, the Irish parliament and the Northern Ireland parliament to a court-based process. This socio-legal approach allows changing definitions of gendered marital roles and marital cruelty to be assessed. In charting the exceptionalism of Ireland's divorce provision in a European and imperial framework, the study uncovers governmental reluctance to reform Irish divorce law which spans jurisdictions and centuries. This was therefore not only a law dictated by religious strictures but also by a long-lived moral conservatism.

 

 

 

In Anthropology, Dr Hugh Turpin joins us as a fixed-term Lecturer in Anthropology. Dr Turpin researches the Anthropology of Religion, having worked with Dr Jon Lanman of our Institute for Cognition and Culture.

 

 

In Politics and International Relations we have several new colleagues:

Dr Maria-Adriana Deiana, Lecturer in International Relations, works on gender and women, peace and security. Her recent work includes her latest book, Gender and Citizenship. Promises of Peace in Post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, (Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies), which draws on feminist ethnographic and narrative traditions to challenge abstract understandings of war/peace and revisit the implications of post-conflict international interventions.

 

Dr Jamie Hagen joins us as Lecturer in International Relations. Her work is at the intersection of gender, security studies and queer theory appears in a number of peer reviewed journals including International Affairs (2016), and Critical Studies in Security (2017). Jamie was the 2018-2019 International Studies Association James N. Rosenau Post-Doctoral Fellow.

 

Dr Selina O’Doherty joins us as a fixed-term Lecturer in International Relations. Selina completed her PhD at the University of South Wales. Her doctoral thesis, “Harming by degrees: the responsibility to pre-emptively protect future victims of climate change”, focused on transnational harm and intergenerational justice. Prior to her PhD she completed an MScEcon in Postcolonial Politics at Aberystwyth University and a B.A. (Hons) in International Relations from Dublin City University. Her current research is in the area of activism and the duty of assistance. She is a member of BISA, ISA, EISA and the Climate Ethics network.

 

Dr Nikola Pijovic has been a Research Fellow at the Africa Research and Engagement Centre (AfREC), University of Western Australia, and joins us as a fixed-term Lecturer in International Relations. He specializes in Australian foreign policy, and is a leading authority on Australia’s engagement with Africa, having published academic and media articles on Australia and Africa, as well as providing submissions to the Australian Parliament on the country’s relations with African states. Dr Pijović’s research also focuses on comparative foreign policy-making in two-party political systems, and especially the distinctions between ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ foreign policy. He has also published extensively on statehood, insurgency, and terrorism in Somalia and Somaliland. He recently published, Pijović, N. (2019). Australia and Africa: A New Friend from the South?. Palgrave.

 

 

Dr Jamie Pow joins us Lecturer in Politics. He takes an interest in British and Irish politics, quantitative methods, democratic reform, and conflict transformation. His work has been published in Parliamentary Affairs and Irish Political Studies. Jamie previously served on the advisory group of the Citizens’ Assembly for Northern Ireland. In 2019 he was Postdoctoral Researcher on the ERC Starting Grant “Meeting Great Expectations Through Democratic Innovations” at KU Leuven. 

 

Dr Francine Rossone de Paula was formerly Lecturer at the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Niterói, RJ, where she taught International Relations Critical Theory at the Department of International Relations and Strategic Studies. She has a PhD in Political and Cultural Thought from Virginia Tech (2016). Her first book, The Emergence of Brazil to the Global Stage, Routledge (2018), critically examines discourses, and the effects of these discourses, about Brazil’s status and ‘positioning’ in relation to the ‘global stage’ in the twenty-first century.

 

Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Dr Chenchen Zhang’s research interests lie broadly within social and political theory, political geography, and international relations. Her publications have been focused on citizenship theory, migration and border politics, human rights, and more recently on popular geopolitics and the global influence of “new right” ideas. Her regional expertise is Europe and China. Theoretically she draws on poststructuralist and postcolonial perspectives. Recent publications include Zhang, C. (2019) Right-wing populism with Chinese characteristics? Identity, otherness, and global imaginaries in debating world politics online. European Journal of International Relations. DOI:10.1177/1354066119850253.