My current research is divided into two projects. Digital Geopolitics on the Edges of Globalization: The first project is interested on the digital dimensions of conflict outside of the West, examining the different ways in which urban conflict in cities like Dhaka (in the Shahbag protests in 2013) unfold – and are maybe intensified – by an increasingly complex ‘cyber’-conflict involving bloggers, hackers, digital artists, state-backed ‘cyber armies’ and diasporic networks. Art, Technology and Security/War This project is focused on how artists are examining the new technologies that are central to contemporary security politics – from Drones to surveillance technology to cybersecurity – examining how artists are dealing with the paradoxes of politics and culture in the digital age. My forthcoming book Security/Technology/Politics: Thinking with Virilio (Routledge, 2014) examines the work of Paul Virilio, arguing that a thinker who has been accused of being fatalist who leaves the reader devoid of hope provides us with an important set of insights on politics and security in the contemporary world: and an important ‘untimely’ way of thinking about how to negotiate the problems of thinking about politics and society in an ‘accelerated society.’ I am theme lead of Security Futures, strand of Security Lancaster; Security Futures is an inter-faculty project that  attempts to raise a range of questions – ethical, legal, social, technical – about the emerging technologies that are shaping different aspects of society and security, attempting to get beyond the hypes, fear or optimism that often shapes debate in the public sphere. I am also the lead editor of a books series for Routledge, Conflict, Technology and Security.

critical security studies
European social theory (Zygmunt Bauman and Paul Virilio, in particular)
Emerging Threats

PPR.425 Theorizing Security and War

PPR 221 Understanding Security and Global Politcs

 PPR 325 The Politics of Global Danger

PPR 100 Politics and Governance in the Contemporary World

I am currently writing a book on Paul Virilio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Virilio ) for Routledge's PRIO series (http://www.routledge.com/books/series/prio_new_security_studies_PRIONEWSEC/ ) on critical security studies. The book covers the main themes in Virilio's work, examining his work on the militarization of everyday life and its consequences for contemporary debates on architecture, art, environmental danger, new security technologies, and the politics of the war on terror.

Before coming to Lancaster, I was an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded student at Sussex University: my research was focused on the problem of 'uncertainty' in debates over security politics and climate change, challenging the idea that we can 'geo-engineer' solutions to environmental risk or develop 'technical fixes' to master complex global problems, arguing that this desire to 'master' uncertainty was a symptom of what Virilio describes as 'technological fundamentalism.' Parts of the thesis were published in a book that attempted to highlight the inadequacy of thinking about uncertainty in International Relations, highlighting the 'technical fundamentalism' at play in supposedly Realist approaches to security and their inability to move beyond the temptations of Cold War-style thinking about geopolitical risk and Great Power Politics in a time when serious global insecurities emerge from the 'accidents' of an increasingly networked society: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415460040/.

I have taught courses at Sussex University, the University of Bristol and the Open University.