
Dr Elspeth Van Veeren
B.Sc.(McG.), B.A.(Car.), MSc, PhD(Bristol)
Expertise
Current positions
Associate Professor in Global Politics
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
Contact
Media contact
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Research interests
I am a Senior Lecturer in Political Science in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS) at the University of Bristol and a Resident at the Pervasive Media Studio at the Bristol Watershed.
My work is focused on US security cultures and policies, particularly with relation to the US Global War on Terror and its legacies. First, through a study of torture, security common-sense and popular culture, and then a detailed study and theorisation of visual and material power associated with detention and interrogation practices at Joint Task Force Guantanamo (Security Collisions: Guantánamo and the Materialisation of Post-9/11 Security, Routledge, forthcoming) in order to understand how controversial security practices are made visible and therefore meaningful as part of US security discourses.
My current research focus is a study of secrecy: in relation to the second decade of the US Global War on Terror and the emerging US security doctrine of ‘shadow wars’ and 'manhunting', but particularly in the interconnections between personal and everyday secret keeping that takes gender and race as central to secrecy, and that is key to understanding power on national and transnational scales.
My published work has appeared in a range of edited volumes and peer-reviewed academic journals including New Political Science, International Political Sociology, Review of International Studies, and the Journal of War and Culture Studies.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Justifying ‘Justice’: Tracing the power of ignorance in the cultural politics of punishment
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesDates
01/10/2021 to 30/09/2022
Bringing the War Home II
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesDates
16/11/2020 to 30/06/2021
Secrecy in contemporary security discourses
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesDates
01/09/2017 to 31/08/2023
Forensic Un/Certainty and Political Remains: ᅢツᅡワHow far do we go to identify?
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesDates
02/12/2013 to 02/10/2015
Thesis supervisions
Boko Haram and the Discourse of Terrorism in Nigeria
Supervisors
A critique of the Internet in Mexico
Supervisors
Publications
Recent publications
21/11/2019In conversation: Oliver Kearns and Elspeth Van Veeren on secrecy and the audible
Layered wanderings
International Feminist Journal of Politics
Secrecy's subjects
European Journal of International Security
Invisibility
Visual Global Politics
The War on Terror is hard to see
Critical Military Studies