Research projects

Current peer reviewed research projects include.

Oecumene: Citizenship After Orientalism

This project, led by Prof Engin Isin, is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant (Institutions, values, beliefs and behaviour ERC-AG-SH2). The project focuses on the interaction between two controversial and contested concepts: citizenship – the process by which belonging is recognised and enacted – and orientalism – the assertion of the superiority of western culture over its eastern counterparts.

Mission Impossible?

This British Academy funded research project led by Georgina Blakeley seeks to explain an unexpected political outcome: why Francoist deputies voted overwhelmingly for the 1976 Law for Political Reform which brought about their own political demise.

Militarisation and everyday life

The process known as ‘militarisation’ is in urgent need of re-thinking.

As a result of developments such as the Military Covenant campaign, launched in 2007, successive governments have been forced to pay greater attention to the conditions under which service personnel work and the rewards that might be due for those performing military service. There has been a huge increase in media representations of soldiers in training or at work, but very little academic analysis of the effects of maintaining a fully-manned armed force at home.

Making publics across time and space

Making publics across time and space is an ESRC International Partnership and Networking Grant and is lead by John Clarke and Nick Mahony.

The aim of this project is to construct a new network of connections between researchers in the UK and North America who have been working on similar concerns but whose work has been separated by time and space.

Being in the Zone

Being in the Zone explores the theme of 'peak experience' or 'being in the zone' in music, sport and work. This project is an AHRC funded Research Network, co-investigated by Kath Woodward (OU) and Tim Jordan (King's College London)

Placing Ourselves - investigating categories of belonging and integration

Despite decades of policy-research dialogue integration within the context of migration-mobility remains a contested concept. This project aims to challenge existing binaries in migration, multiculturalism and integration research by conducting research into the dialogical relations between place and practices of belonging and integration.