War Studies

Dennis Rodgers is an ethnographer who joined a Nicaraguan gang in the 1990s as part of his PhD research. Now based at the Geneva Graduate Institute, he spoke to War Studies Podcast about his experiences, from being initiated into a gang to seeing how drug distribution proved a good training for a just-in-time warm tortilla service. The podcast also features a discussion with Kieran Mitton of King's College London about his own work on gangs, including the challenges of achieving meaningful policy change.

Religion is an important factor to consider when examining many conflicts around the world, but what about nonreligion? Dr. Stacey Gutkowski, senior lecturer in the DWS and Co-Director of Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network (NSRN) argues that in order to understand conflict, one needs to not only look at individual experiences but also at what religious and nonreligious resources individuals draw on to help inform their ethical understandings and perceptions of the world. Listen to the 2018 NSRN Annual Lecture, 'Secular Powers and Heretic Undercurrents', by Samuli Schielke which originally accompanied this interview here: https://soundcloud.com/warstudies/nonreligion-and-war-studies Dr Stacey Gutkowski is a Senior Lecturer in Conflict Studies and Deputy Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies at King’s College London. Prior to joining King’s she was an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex; a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, Arizona State University; and a Research Associate with the Religion and Ethics in the Making of War and Peace Programme, University of Edinburgh.

In his first speech as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson once again invited comparisons with his political hero Winston Churchill, suggested that British 'pluck and nerve' were needed to deliver Brexit and mobilised Britain's ports, banks, factories and more on a quasi-war footing. In light of this, here is an interview recorded for the D-Day commemorations which provides a more rounded perspective of British history through a key episode of the Second World War. Dr Jonathan Fennell discusses the frailty and trauma of the British war experience, Churchill’s objections to the Normandy landings, and the importance not just of the great individuals, but of collective effort of millions of ordinary people in winning the war.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City’s gay district, Greenwich Village on June 28, 1969. This event was monumental in the progression of queer rights being a part of human rights. 50 years on, progress has been made with same sex acts becoming legal and being accepted within most parts of society. However, when it comes to safety and security, very little research and data is in place to accurately represent and more importantly protect the queer community. Dr Jamie J. Hagen, Visiting Fellow of Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics and Politics joined King’s College London’s Senior Lecturer in Security Studies Dr Amanda Chisholm to discuss transgender rights and why we need to queer security studies.

Date of Recording: 04/07/2019 Description: This presentation will detail preliminary results of an ethnographic comparison of gang dynamics in Nicaragua and South Africa by Professor Dennis Rodgers (Graduate Institute, Geneva) and Professor Steffen Jensen (Aalborg University, Denmark), being carried out under the auspices of the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant-funded project “Gangs, Gangsters, and Ganglands: Towards a Global Comparative Ethnography” (GANGS). It draws on a systematized consideration of our respective individual trajectories of over 20 years of longitudinal ethnographic research in Nicaragua (by Rodgers) and South Africa (by Jensen), as well as the insights gleaned from the first of four joint cross-site research visits to Nicaragua and South Africa that are taking place in 2019 and 2020. The presentation explores both the nature of ethnographic comparison as well as the empirical similarities and differences noted between gang dynamics in the two contexts, and offers preliminary conceptual thoughts as to how to interpret these, both with respect to broader contextual factors as well as from the perspective of individual life histories. Speaker: Professor Dennis Rodgers (The Graduate Institute, Geneva) For more information on news and upcoming events, please visit our website at KCL.AC.UK/security-studies

Date of Publication: 28/06/2019 Description: Today, the state of human rights in China appears to be at its worse since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. According to Human Rights Watch, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to increase its hold over government bureaucracy and has subsumed state bodies in charge of religious, ethnic, and overseas Chinese affairs. Chinese authorities have also significantly increased repression and systematic abuse against religious groups, especially the Turkic Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region, and have continued the arbitrary detention, torture, and enforced disappearance of dissenters and human rights defenders. Human rights abuses on China’s mainland are very concerning, especially when considering this state’s place in global politics and economic relations. China’s growing power in the international system makes it an exporter of human rights abuse and has allowed China to extend its reach to silence many of its critics across the globe. However, dissenters and human rights defenders in China’s free, autonomous territories such as Hong Kong are obviously the communities that are most at risk of falling victim to human rights abuse by mainland China. Earlier this month, we saw mass protests take place in Hong Kong in opposition to a now-suspended bill that would have allowed mainland China to extradite individuals from Hong Kong to stand trial. This bill would have removed any protection that the people of Hong Kong had from mainland China’s arbitrary and inhumane criminal justice system. On 16 June, nearly 2 million protesters took to the streets in Hong Kong to express their concerns and resistance to being subject to mainland China’s criminal justice system and successfully pressured leadership to suspend the bill. In this edition of the War Studies Podcast, we asked Benedict Rogers, founder and chair of the human rights organization Hong Kong Watch, to tell us about the state of human rights in China and the recent protests in Hong Kong around the now suspended extradition bill. Interviewee bio: Benedict Rogers specialises in human rights in Asia. He is also co-founder and Chair of Hong Kong Watch. He is the author of six books, and a regular contributor to international media including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Guardian, the Diplomat, The Catholic Herald, and The Huffington Post. and has appeared regularly on the BBC, CNN, Sky News and Al-Jazeera. He is the author of The Darkest Moment: The Crackdown on Human Rights in China 2013-2016. Benedict is a frequent speaker in universities, schools and conferences around the world. He has testified at hearings in the British Parliament, the US Congress, the European Parliament and the Japanese Parliament. He has a BA in History and Politics from Royal Holloway, University of London, and an MA in China Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Hong Kong Watch website: https://www.hongkongwatch.org/ War Studies Live Stream - China 30 Years After the Tiananmen Massacre (Ben Rogers): https://www.facebook.com/WarStudies/videos/783991868662508/

The TV series Chernobyl has brought nuclear power back to the public's attention, at precisely the same time as concern about climate change is at record levels. Many see nuclear power as key to curbing carbon emissions and preventing climate change. but do we really have to accept its risks in order to get to a carbon free future? And do the nuclear capacity figures stack up? This week King’s College London brought academics and industry figures to discuss nuclear energy and climate security. On the podcast hear Dr Simon Chin-Yee, a researcher at King's, discuss his work on the global impacts of climate change and the choices we must make to mitigate further human costs. After that, Philippe Costs, Senior Advisor at the World Nuclear Association, makes the case for nuclear energy in a speech recorded on 13 June at King's College London.

Date of Publication: 01/06/2019 Description: In this week’s podcast, we are going to learn about a fascinating new book on Military Virtues and how military ethics training can improve decision making in the field. Then, we will change tracks to the domain of art and conflict to explore how art can add to analytical research methodologies used in international relations (IR) with the members of the Truth Tellers Pilot study, which seeks to examine the unspeakable aspects of the response to the 2017 Manchester Arena Attack through newly develop art-IR methodologies. Interviewees: Military Virtues https://www.howgatepublishing.com/product-page/militaryvirtues Professor David Whetham, Professor of Ethics and the Military Profession at the Defence Studies Department and Co-editor of Military Virtues. Learn more about Prof Whetham's work here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/whetham-dr-david Truth Tellers Project https://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/warstudies/research/groups/arts/truthtellers/index Tom de Freston, artist and writer based in Oxford and member of the Truth Tellers Project. Mariah Whelan is a poet and academic based in The Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester. Dr Pablo de Orellana, Lecturer in International Relations at the Department of War Studies. Dr Christiana Spens, Lecturer and Writer in the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews.

Date of Recording: 14/05/2019 Description: Why do international peacebuilding organizations sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, even within the same country? Bridging the gaps between the peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and global governance scholarship, this book argues that international peacebuilding organizations repeatedly fail because they are accountable to global actors, not to local institutions or people. International peacebuilding organizations can succeed only when country-based staff bypass existing accountability structures and empower local stakeholders to hold their global organizations accountable for achieving local-level peacebuilding outcomes. In other words, the innovative, if seemingly wayward, actions of individual country-office staff are necessary to improve peacebuilding performance. Using in-depth studies of organizations operating in Burundi over a fifteen-year period, combined with fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nepal, South Sudan, and Sudan, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations, African studies, and peace and conflict studies as well as policymakers. Speaker Bio: Susanna P. Campbell is an Assistant Professor at American University’s School of International Service. Prof. Campbell’s research and teaching address war-to-peace transitions, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, international development and humanitarian aid, global governance, IO and INGO behaviour, and the micro-dynamics of civil war and peace. She uses mixed-method research designs and has conducted extensive fieldwork in conflict-affected countries, including Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, Sudan, South Sudan, and Timor-Leste. She has received numerous grants for her research, including from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Folke Bernadotte Academy, the Swiss Network for International Studies, and the United States Institute of Peace. She is currently finishing her second book, Aiding Peace? Donor Behavior in Conflict-Affected Countries. She has also published peer-reviewed articles in International Studies Revi.

In 2017 Qatar was subjected to a blockade by its neighbours, led by Saudi Arabia, which severely restricted its trading and transport links. Two years on the diplomatic crisis has not been resolved. In this podcast, Dr Andreas Krieg of the Defence Studies Department at King's College London discusses the blockade, in particular the ways that narratives were weaponised by Qatar's rivals to justify and build support for their actions both domestically and overseas. Qatar's reaction to this crisis is also discussed.

Date of Recording: 25/04/2019 Description: Speaker: Michael Talbot, University of Greenwich When we think of the Ottoman Empire, we tend to think of them as a terrestrial empire. Yet as well as being ‘sultan of the two lands’, the Ottoman sovereign was also ‘ruler of the two seas’. In part, the relative lack of attention paid to Ottoman imperial discourses over water stems from a notion that, following key naval defeats in the 16th century, the Ottomans simply withdrew from the Mediterranean, leaving it to the mercy of foreign forces, old and new. This paper will argue that in the eighteenth century, the Ottoman state rejuvenated its approach to empire at sea, and instituted a number of new mechanisms to protect its subjects in the Eastern Mediterranean, often at the request of the inhabitants of its islands and coasts. Using sources from Ottoman, British, and French archives, this paper aims to demonstrate that the Ottoman state utilised a number of rhetorical, legal, and military measures to exert its authority in what it claimed as its territorial waters in the Mediterranean Sea. Michael Talbot is Senior Lecturer in the History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Middle East. His first book, British-Ottoman Relations, 1661-1807, examined the development of diplomatic practices between London and Istanbul in the 18th century, and he has researched (among other topics) the history of Ottoman maritoriality in the same period. Hosted by the Laughton Naval History Unit of the Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War on behalf of the British Commission for Maritime History and the Society for Nautical Research

Date of Recording: 28/04/2019 Description: 2020 will mark the 75th anniversary of Allied victory in World War II. While Russia will celebrate its greatest victory in style, outside the region the Soviet contribution to victory is still poorly understood. Meanwhile, other successor states of the Soviet Union have embraced a very different narrative of World War II. In Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, or Ukraine the Soviet Union in is seen as the aggressor rather than the victor, the perpetrator rather than the victim. In the centenary year, we can expect these conflicting memories to collide openly. This talk will provide a historical background to these current polemics, which are all dependent on simplifications of the complexity of the Soviet Second World War. In order to sketch this complexity, this talk locates the Soviet war in a long Second World War spanning from the outbreak of war in Asia in 1937 to the pacification of the Soviet western borderlands by 1949. It contextualises the Soviet diplomatic and military efforts in this period with its domestic history, that is, the social, political, and economic developments of Stalinist society. Speaker Bio: Prof Mark Edele is a historian of the Soviet Union and its successor states, in particular Russia. He is the inaugural Hansen Chair in History as well as an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He was trained as a historian at the Universities of Erlangen, Tübingen, Moscow and Chicago. He is the author of Soviet Veterans of the Second World War (Oxford University Press 2008), Stalinist Society (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Stalin’s Defectors (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Date of Publication: 26/04/2019 Description: Across the School of Security Studies at KCL, students are given unique opportunities to apply the knowledge and skills that they learn throughout their courses by participating in research projects, conflict simulations, and even journalism. Students of Dr Peter Busch’s BA module ‘New Wars, New Media, New Journalism’ were tasked with producing 5min podcasts, covering events and guest lectures held within the School of Security Studies. In this podcast, we are going to listen to three outstanding student projects from Dr Busch’s BA module. You will hear from Eleanor Fishleigh on last year’s event ‘Art and Reconciliation: a conversation’, Cory Turner on the topic of wargaming in discussion with Prof Philip Sabin, and Robert Adderley on T.V. Paul’s book talk ‘Restraining Great Powers’. ____________________________________________ If you would like to learn more about the topics discussed here and about student opportunities within the School of Security Studies, please visit our website at kcl.ac.uk/security-studies

Date of Recording: 02/04/2019 Description: Air Marshal Edward Stringer, the Director General of Joint Force Development and the Defence Academy, will kickstart the week with a public lecture, part of the WN’s inaugural wargaming lecture series. He will discuss the need for a reinvigorated wargaming effort in the UK and among NATO allies to support robust analysis and innovation in the context of the new strategic challenges facing the alliance. In this lecture he will discuss three sets of questions: 1. What new analytical requirements does the changing security environment present to the UK and its allies? What is the value of wargaming as part of the broader analytical toolkit in meeting these requirements? 2. What has the UK done to reinvigorate wargaming as a tool for strategic and operational analysis? 3. How should the current practice of wargaming adapt to meet the new policy requirements? What could the policy, professional wargaming and academic communities do to further the utility of wargaming? Professor Wyn Bowen, head of the School of Security Studies, will deliver welcome remarks. Ivanka Barzashka, founder and co-director of the Wargaming Network, will chair the lecture. ______________________ For more news and information on upcoming events, please visit our website at kcl.ac.uk/warstudies

Date of Publication: 13/04/2019 Description: This podcast is part of the War Studies New Voices series which showcases emerging research from our PhD community. Emily Brown researches the ways in which torture and prisoner abuse narratives in American popular culture have helped to conceptualise the practice of judicial torture. Since the attacks on US soil on September 11th, 2001, it has become increasingly obvious that torture is considered acceptable in fictional representations of American counter-terror practices, even if only in extraordinary circumstances. What has been largely ignored, however, is the part popular culture has played in normalising the extraordinary into ordinary, everyday practice. The way in which we understand torture relies on how we consume popular culture, which presents torture as an unpleasant but unremarkable past occurrence that has been integrated into the ordinary. Helene Olsen studies the relationship between mercenaries and legitimacy. She looks at how mercenaries have been objected against and de-legitimised using specific speech-acts – moral objections – and how these seem to transcend historical settings. She explores the tension between the extensive use of mercenaries in warfare and the apparent moral opposition to their presences and actions and suggests that mercenaries are objected against and de-legitimised when they behave as disruptors of the ideal polity. In this edition, Emily Brown and Helene Olsen discuss areas where their research may overlap and diverge.