People
Our disciplinary expertise covers an array of specialisms.
Dr Timofey Agarin is interested in relationships between the state and society, interrelations between the majority and the minority, issues relating to non-discrimination in the wider Europe and the impact of European integration broadly conceived on societal change and dynamics in political institutions.
Dr Andreasson’s research is in comparative politics, the political economy of development and postcolonial politics, focussing on Southern Africa and the USA. He is currently researching the role of international oil companies in energy transitions and the future of fossil fuels.
Professor John Barry's research interests are in green moral and political theory, particularly green republicanism; heterodox, green and post-growth political economy; the politics and political economy of sustainability transitions; the politics of climate breakdown and the political economy of low carbon energy transitions.
Dr. Berger Hobson's research interests lie broadly within the realms of security and conflict studies, leadership studies and Special Operation Forces. She studies violent non-state actors and their role in conflicts, particularly in the Northern Ireland and the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. She also studies both state and non-state leaders and their role in changing conflict dynamics and evolving military complexity and the proliferation of special operation forces.
Dr Mike Bourne’s research focuses on a wide range of security issues. He is interested in critical security theories, and the relations of materiality, technology, and violence. His work has engaged issues of arms control (from small arms to nuclear weapons), illicit trafficking, border control, and technology development.
Dr Keith Breen’s research areas are political and social theory, his focus being questions of political ethics and philosophies of work and economic organization.
Dr Shane Brighton researches the field of relations between armed conflict, identity and society. He has written on the philosophy and sociology of war, terrorism and counterterrorism and contemporary strategic debates. This work has particular relevance for understanding how societal dynamics relate to armed forces and foreign, defence and security policy.
Dr Michele Crepaz is an Illuminate Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast with a focus on comparative politics and public policy. His areas of specialisation are Interest Group Politics and Transparency Research.
Dr Maria Deiana's research deploys feminist and other critical perspectives to examine the interrelated issues of war, peace, security. Her monograph titled 'Gender and Citizenship: Promises of Peace in Post-Dayton Bosnia & Herzegovina' was published by Palgrave in 2018. She is Co-Director of the Centre for Gender in Politics.
Dr Ralph Dietl publishes and teaches on International History and International Security. The core focus of his research is on European defence, the transatlantic defence relationship and nuclear arms control.
Professor Richard English's research focuses on the politics and history of nationalism, political violence, and terrorism, with a particular focus on Ireland and Britain.
Dr Elodie Fabre’s research focuses on the relationship between political parties, territorial politics and citizen engagement. Her project on citizen engagement and regional democracy explores whether regionalism has provided an opportunity to develop new forms of citizen engagement.
Dr Clara Fischer is an Illuminate Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. She works in the areas of social and political theory, feminist theory, and gender politics, and has particular research interests in feminist-pragmatism, theories of emotion/affect, embodiment and shame, institutionalisation and containment, gender and austerity, and Irish feminisms.
Professor John Garry’s research focuses on understanding citizens’ political attitudes and voting behaviour. He examines elections, referendums and also deliberative mini-publics.
Dr Viviane Gravey's research focuses on the relationship between policy change and shocks to policy-making systems. This is reflected in two main areas of research. First, environmental policy dismantling in the European Union and its links to further European (dis)integration.
Dr Jamie Hagen's research is at the intersection of gender, security studies and queer theory. She researches LGBTQ inclusion in Women, Peace and Security practices as well as queer analysis of security studies more broadly. She is Co-Director of the Centre for Gender in Politics.
Dr Heather Johnson’s research focuses on irregular migration and asylum seekers, border security, and the practices of resistance, solidarity and protest of non-citizens. She is interested in developing new understandings of mobility and non-citizenship, and particularly in new methods for engaging with these issues.
Dr Sohyun Zoe Lee’s research interests are in international political economy, international trade, regionalism, and free trade agreements (FTAs), with a particular focus on Northeast Asia.
Professor Debbie Lisle’s research in critical International Relations and International Political Sociology explores issues of difference, mobility, security, travel, visuality, governmentality, biopolitics, materiality, technology, borders, practice and power.
Professor Muiris MacCarthaigh's research covers a variety of themes within and between political science, public policy and public administration. His current projects are concerned with how governments can best address the social impacts of Covid-19, the effects of technological advancement on public governance, and the evolution of public sector reforms.
Dr Cillian McBride works on the ethics and politics of recognition and on republican political theory. His interest in recognition theory encompasses questions of equality, toleration and freedom, while his work on republican freedom draws on work in the history of political thought and the critical theory tradition as well as on Pettit’s work on freedom as non-domination.
Cathal McCall is Professor of European Politics and Borders. He has published widely on the theme of European Union cross-border cooperation and conflict transformation. Currently, he has a specific interest in bordering, debordering and rebordering on the island of Ireland.
Professor Lee McGowan’s research focuses on European Politics. He is particularly interested in the structures of EU governance with special reference to European competition policy; the relationship between the UK and the EU; the theme of far right and populist politics and political violence.
Dr Peter McLoughlin works in the broad field of contemporary political history in Ireland and Northern Ireland, with a particular focus on the Northern Ireland problem and peace process.
Dr Susan McManus is a political theorist with an interest in utopian political thought, anti-humanist critiques of cosmopolitanism and the politics of resistance in the wider context of modern political thought and post-structuralism.
Dr Aishling Mc Morrow's research is situated within International Relations, broadly, and specialises in terrorism and security studies. Aishling examines the interplay of affect, emotion, the corporeal, and the spatial at sites that have been deemed insecure due to the looming threat (both real and perceived) of terrorism.
Professor Alister Miskimmon's research interests are primarily in the areas of strategic narratives, German, European and global security issues and European integration.
Professor Margaret O'Callaghan works on cultural identity in the Irish Free state; crime, nationality and the law in Victorian Ireland; the high politics of Britain in Ireland since 1880; Irish political thought; women in independent Ireland; Roger Casement; genealogies of partition ; the politics of commemoration; the ‘pre-Troubles’ Troubles.
Professor David Phinnemore’s research interests are focused on European integration and cover in particular processes of EU treaty reform and their impact on the EU, the political dynamics underpinning EU enlargement and the EU’s relations with European non-member states.
Dr Jamie Pow's research focuses on the way citizens interact with democratic decision-making, including through elections, mini-publics and referendums. He has a particular interest in the politics of Northern Ireland and recent projects have explored public opinion towards Brexit.
Dr Jack Taggart is a critical political economist. His work examines both the shifting politics of international development and the contested nature of contemporary global governance.
Dr Andrew Thomson’s research interests lie in the effects of pro-government militias on the dynamics of violence in civil war and on the prospects for conflict transformation and peace.
Research Fellows
Project: Belfast Climate Commission, Community Climate Action Working Group.
Project: Governance for ‘a place between’: the Multilevel Dynamics of Implementing the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.
Honorary Professors
Professor John Coakley is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA), and Emeritus Professor of Politics at University College Dublin. His research interests include nationalism, ethnic conflict, and Irish and Northern Irish politics.
Professor Brendan O’Leary is the Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and has served as political and constitutional advisor for the UN, the EU, the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, the UK and Irish governments, and the British Labour Party. His research concerns multinational societies, federalism, and power sharing.
Emeritus Professors
Professor Paul Bew is an honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge University, and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA). Formerly a historical adviser to the Bloody Sunday Tribunals, Lord Bew is a Crossbench Life Peer. His research interests centre on Irish history and politics.
Professor Adrian Guelke’s research focuses on the politics of deeply divided societies, especially South Africa and Northern Ireland. In addition to his academic contributions, he chaired the Advisory Board for the latest Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report of the Community Relations Council, chairing its most recent publication (No. 5, Oct 2018).
Professor Brian M. Walker is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, President of the Irish Association, the Belfast Literary Society, and the Belfast Civic Trust, amongst other key positions. His research focuses on commemoration, the revolutionary period in Ireland (1919-23) and the Irish political response to the famine (1847-52).
Professor Graham Walker is a member of the Royal Historical Society and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Irish-Scottish Studies. His research focuses on Scottish and Irish Political History and the politics of sport.