Blog post archive

Wednesday, 4 May 2022
Book review: The Suspect: Counterterrorism, Islam, and the Security State

by Rizwaan Sabir, Pluto Press, 2022, 256 pp. ISBN: 9780745338484 The contemporary surveillance state of the UK and its allies is in many ways the bureaucratic par excellence, with its logics, language and processes operating through seemingly deliberate and elaborate sets of contradictions and linguistic sleights-of-hand. It is simultaneously vague, ...

Thursday, 16 Dec 2021
Expecting the exceptional in the everyday: Policing global transportation hubs

Global transportation hubs such as airports and maritime ports have become vital spaces for the international networked economy. Global economic opportunities depend on the effective flow of people and things, and make use of the different infrastructures and modes of the transport system. For instance, around 80 percent of global ...

Thursday, 25 Jul 2019
Dressing for a machine-readable world: An interview with Adam Harvey

‘Think Privacy’ Public Service Announcements by the Privacy Gift Shop ©Adam Harvey 2016 Adam Harveyis an award-winning artist and researcher based in Berlin. His work has been widely covered in such publications as the New York Times, CNN and the Huffington Post, and has also been cited by critical theorists ...

Thursday, 9 Aug 2018
Challenging Everyday Nuclear Insecurity

Founded in 1982, Faslane Peace Camp in Scotland clams to be the longest lived of its kind. Crammed into a small roadside verge, the brightly coloured and ramshackle caravans of the camp are located just a few hundred yards from the razor-wire fences of Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde, home ...

Thursday, 18 Jan 2018
Debunking the Security Myth of Military Might

By Vitoria Basham Using and maintaining military force as a means of achieving security:  a flawed idea? In my recent article published in Security Dialogue I critique the longstanding idea that military force and the maintenance of strong armed forces provides security. This idea forms part of the social contract ...

Tuesday, 1 Dec 2015
Attacks on Humanitarian Aid Workers: Five New Findings

More aid workers are being targeted in violent attacks than ever before, but the roots of humanitarian insecurity have nuanced and surprising causes. Syria. Afghanistan. Mali. Central African Republic. Today’s complex conflicts seem to be defined by insurgents, terrorist groups and other violent actors with ideologies that increasingly disregard the ...