Podcast

The debut episode of Insecure: A Security Podcast discusses environmental security and COP 26 with Prof. Richard Beardsworth, the Head of the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds, and Dr. Nicole Nisbett, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leeds.

This fascinating discussion explores how climate change is securitised by different actors, actors’ different experiences of climate change and climate diplomacy, the potential conflict between climate security and other forms of security, and how does the Russian invasion of Ukraine impact on the challenge of climate change and the need for climate action. In doing so the episode seeks to address the central question: is the world more secure or insecure today as a result of COP 26?

In this second episode of Insecure: A Security Podcast we discuss the future of terrorism studies with Dr Gordon Clubb, Associate Professor in Terrorism at the University of Leeds and a Research Fellow at the German Institute for Radicalisation and De-Radicalisation Studies and Mohammad Didarul Islam, a PhD student at the University of Leeds and an Assistant Professor at the University of Dhaka.

This fascinating discussion explores current and emerging trends within terrorism studies, the nature of ‘the terrorist threat’, and the relationship between the study of terrorism, extremism, and CVE (counter-violent extremism).

It also showcases the research undertaken by both our speakers on CVE and deradicalisation in different contexts, as well as, their thoughts on the current state of terrorism studies and the existing literature.

In this bonus episode Dr Harrison Swinhoe and Marine Gueguin discuss their own research within terrorism studies.

Dr Harrison Swinhoe is an Early Career Research at the University of Leeds. His PhD thesis explored how the Islamic State’s strategic narratives of sovereignty and political legitimacy were constructed through the English language propaganda content produced by the group between 2014 and 2017. In so doing his thesis analysed a range of discourses constructed by the Islamic State and the relationship between these discourses and the group’s strategic narratives of sovereignty and political legitimacy. This thesis was supervised by Pr Jack Holland and Dr Gordon Clubb. Dr Swinhoe has also published an article in Critical Studies on Terrorism entitled, '“They are not muslims. They are monsters”: the accidental takfirism of British political elites', which explored discursive practices utilised by British political elites to police the boundaries of religion and the potential implications and risks of these discursive practices.

In this first episode of Season Two, Dr Marine Gueguin and Dr Harrison Swinhoe discuss the future of their research, both as Early Career Researchers and Research Fellows at the University of Leeds.

In this fascinating conversation, Marine discusses her recent research including a forthcoming book chapter in an edited volume for Manchester University Press in which she analyses the colonial legacies of French counterterrorism strategy in securitising the terrorist bodies in response to the threat of terrorism. Additionally we discuss a Special Issue which she has contributed to and which is soon to be published in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, where she writes about the analysis undertaken on the French political discourse and the framing of the terrorist threat to uncover the securitisation framework in November 2015.

Learn more about Marine's research here

Harry discusses a paper which he recently presented at the ISA Annual Convention 2024 in which he compared representations of the ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ in the English language propaganda produced by the Islamic State and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham.

Learn more about Harry's research here.

In this second episode of Insecure: A Security Podcast Season 2, hosts Marine and Harry discuss the future of Security Studies with a number of  guests from the University of Leeds. They answer questions which were put to them by undergraduate students taking the Security Studies module at the University of Leeds and address a key question: what is the future of security studies?

Guests on this podcast:

Dr Louise Pears - Lecturer of Global Security Challenges.

Prof. Jack Holland - Professor of Global Security Challenges.

Lucas de Belmont,- postgraduate researcher at the University of Leeds.

Mohamed Abdi Mohamood, postgraduate researcher at the University of Leeds.

Dr Laura Considine, Associate Professor in International Politics

Dr James Worrall, Associate Professor in International Relations and Middle East Studies.

This third episode of Insecure: A Security Podcast Season 2 is a special episode as the CGSC and EJIS gave the podcast team an opportunity to be present at their conference “Security in times of polycrisis” in May 2023. The term ‘polycrisis’ has gained prominence over recent years as a way of articulating the sum of the multiple, intersecting crises of our contemporary world. In this episode, panelists Alba Griffin, Ishmael Billa, Jethro Norman, Natalie James and Katherine Pye speakwith Dr Harrison Swinhoe and Dr Marine Gueguin about their work.

In this fourth episode of Insecure: A Security Podcast Season 2 hosts Dr Marine Gueguin & Dr Harry Swinhow discuss ‘Civil Wars: from internationalised to localised conflicts’ with Dr James Worrall, Dr Alex Waterman and Megghi Pengili.

Access the episode here.