Charlotte Heath-Kelly
Biographic Data
| ID | 270750 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Charlotte Heath-Kelly |
| GIVEN NAMES | Charlotte |
| FAMILY NAME | Heath-Kelly |
| SIGNATURE | HEATH-KELLY C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5237-4691 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 424 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Making “Domestic” Terrorism in the Aftermath: Inquiries and Internal Reviews in Britain
This paper explores how inquiries and internal reviews into terrorist attacks make them “domestic,” by discursively separating political violence from its international, political, and historical context. By undertaking fact-finding work, inquiries apply a technocratic, micro-level focus to the days, hours, minutes, and seconds before an atrocity—jettisoning the international and historical factors, which may otherwise have appeared relevant. The…
The Politics of Preventing Violent Extremism: Liberal Democracy, Civil Society, and Countering Radicalization
The Politics of Preventing Violent Extremism explores how counter-radicalization policies have come to dominate European counterterrorism and security. Using interviews with practitioners across seven European nations, it documents how national security policies have been repurposed to identify individuals deemed ‘vulnerable’ to extremism and radicalization, and to provide targeted preventative interventions from welfare state agencies. Crucially…
Social defence’ and the resilience of the domestic war on terror: A genealogy of social security, national security, and defence
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has moved attention within International Security back to Great Power Politics and interstate war, and away from phenomena like ‘foreign terrorist fighters’ and lone actor terrorism. Is the War on Terror paradigm receding? This paper argues that counter-radicalisation imaginaries and counter-extremism programming will all remain stubbornly present despite the shift back to interstate war. The resilience of domestic Wa…
Multi-agency counter-terrorism in Britain and Norway: Intelligence agencies and the administration of welfare
This article explores the emergence of new counter-terrorism programmes in the Britain and Norway through which intelligence and security agencies administer welfare. Support and resources are covertly allocated to persons identified as potential threats, through multi-agency structures led by intelligence and security agencies. Unlike Countering Violent Extremism programmes, this multi-agency management is not led by the local municipality; nor …
Devolution and the Prevent Strategy in Scotland: Constitutional Politics and the Path of Scottish P/CVE
This paper explores the implementation of the ‘Prevent Duty’ in Scotland. Using archival research into Parliamentary debates, as well as research interviews with Scottish government representatives and healthcare professionals, the paper sheds light on the constitutional politics surrounding the Counterterrorism and Security Act 2015 which resulted in the markedly different applications of Prevent between England and Scotland. The divergence of t…
What Drives Counter-Extremism? The Extent of P/CVE Policies in the West and Their Structural Correlates
Counter-extremism (P/CVE) policies have shot to global prominence rapidly, yet there are large discrepancies in their implementation both between, and inside, countries. In this paper, we construct and present a robust index of P/CVE policies in Western countries (N = 38), based on data submitted by national experts, which we then use to test three hypothesized structural correlates of the extent of P/CVE implementation: threat of terrorism (meas…
The long history of prevention: Social Defence, security and anticipating future crimes in the era of ‘penal welfarism’
Using a combination of documentary and archival research methods, this article explores the development of Social Defence criminology across the 19th and 20th centuries—highlighting the influence the ‘new’ Social Defence movement had upon the United Nations' and Council of Europe's international crime policy programmes. By exploring the integration of Social Defence within these international programmes, the article is able to challenge several l…
Rehabilitation within pre-crime interventions: The hybrid criminology of social crime prevention and countering violent extremism
Criminological literature frequently argues that the rehabilitative penological paradigm of the 20th century (‘penal welfarism’) has been replaced by pre-crime, risk-based, ‘new penology’. Under the conditions of social and economic neoliberalism, it is claimed, the commitment to rehabilitating individuals has been withdrawn. In this article, we explore the curious persistence of rehabilitation—enacted within crime prevention and countering-viole…
A moral education? British Values, colour-blindness, and preventing terrorism
The Prevent Strategy tasks the British education sector with preventing radicalisation and extremism. It defines extremism as opposition to fundamental British Values and requires schools to promote these values and refer students and staff believed to be vulnerable to radicalisation. Little research examining the enactment of the Prevent and British Values curriculum has included students. To fill this gap, we investigated how students, teachers…
Cold War Psychiatry, Extremism, and Expertise: The 'Special Committee on the Political Abuse of Psychiatry
Throughout the history of psychiatric ethical professionalization, the question of the 'extremist' contextualizes and frames the limits of medical practice. Using archival research at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the article explores how professional committees debated medical ethics after evidence of psychiatric participation in national security measures against dissidents. British, American, and global professional associations organize…
The political use of victimhood: Spanish collective memory of ETA through the war on terror paradigm
Victims have become a topic of scholarly debate in conflict studies, especially regarding the impact of their activism on the evolution and termination of violence. Victims of terrorism are now enlisted within counter-terrorism, given their moral authority as spokespeople for counter-narratives and de-escalation. Our research explores how Spanish terrorism victims’ associations have evolved across eras of political violence and how they mediate t…
Critical Terrorism Studies at Ten: Contributions, Cases and Future Challenges
Rituals of world politics: On (Visual) Practices Disordering Things
Rituals are customarily muted into predictable routines aimed to stabilise social orders and limit conflict. As a result, their magic lure recedes into the background, and the unexpected and disruptive elements are downplayed. Our collaborative contribution counters this move by foregrounding rituals of world politics as social practices with notable disordering effects. We engage a series of ‘world pictures’ to show the worlding and disruptive w…
Designing the Pentagon Memorial: Gendered statecraft, heroic victimhood and site authenticity in War on Terror commemoration
How does a memorial curate an image of conflict when it is dwarfed by 6.5million square feet of the Department of Defense, when it is tasked with commemorating simultaneous military and civilian deaths, and when its public access consists of a sliver cut through one of the most secure sites on earth? Given the uniquely inconvenient siting of the Pentagon Memorial, this article argues that the Pentagon Memorial was itself curated by two memorial g…
Curating conflict: Political Violence in Museums, Memorials, and Exhibitions
Amidst the protest movements sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hand of police officers in Minneapolis in May 2020, anti-racist demonstrators have taken over prominent statues evoking people and systems that supported the enslavement of people of colour. In Richmond, Virginia, the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee became a site of confrontations between protesters and the police (Schneider 2020). Imposing themselves as co-curat…
Memory wound: Architectural controversies in Norway after the July 22 attacks
Le 22 juillet 2011, les attentats d’Oslo et Utøya, perpétrés par Anders Breivik tuèrent 77 personnes. Des projets de mémoriaux nationaux en leur hommage furent abandonnés en 2017 suite à d’importantes protestations. À partir de multiples visites sur les sites concernés et d’entretiens avec des protagonistes clés, cet article explore ces controverses mémorielles norvégiennes. Le travail de Maurice Halbwachs y est mobilisé afin de comprendre en quo…
Memory Wound: Architectural controversies in Norway after the 22 July attacks
Le 22 juillet 2011, les attentats d'Oslo et Utøya, perpétrés par Anders Breivik tuèrent 77 personnes. Des projets de mémoriaux nationaux en leur hommage furent abandonnés en 2017 suite à d'importantes protestations. À partir de multiples visites sur les sites concernés et d'entretiens avec des protagonistes clés, cet article explore ces controverses mémorielles norvégiennes. Le travail de Maurice Halbwachs y est mobilisé afin de comprendre en quo…
The banality of counterterrorism “after, after 9/11”? Perspectives on the Prevent duty from the UK health care sector
Since 2015, the UK healthcare sector sector has (along with education and social care) been responsibilised for noticing signs of radicalisation and reporting patients to the Prevent programme. The Prevent Duty frames the integration of healthcare professionals into the UK's counterterrorism effort as the banal extension of safeguarding. But safeguarding has previously been framed as the protection of children, and adults with care and support ne…
Survivor Trees and memorial groves: Vegetal commemoration of victims of terrorism in Europe and the United States
In commemorations of human lives lost in terrorism, European and American memorials increasingly appeal to the aesthetics of 'nature' to symbolise societal regrowth. This article interrogates the ironic and ontological registers involved in commemorating human life through vegetal symbols, paying particular attention to the World Trade Center site in Manhattan. Memorials traditionally conceive of human life as distinct from material and living ec…
Forgetting Isis: Enmity, Drive and Repetition in Security Discourse
This paper explores the reconstitution and repetition of threat imaginaries in security discourse, with particular focus on the War on Terror era. Upon vanquishing the enemy (whether an individual militant or militant group) no tangible increase in ‘security’ is claimed by securitising actors. Instead, the security apparatus turns away and reconstructs the figuration of insecurity elsewhere. Al Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS replace each other as si…
Neoliberalism and Terror: Critical Engagements
A Violent Elephant in the Room: Bringing Foreign Policy into Van Der Walt's Analysis of Reciprocity in the War on Terror
On viewing: The politics of looking at the corpse’: a reply
This is a reply to:Auchter, Jessica. 2017. “On viewing: the politics of looking at the corpse.” Global Discourse. 7 (2–3): 223–238. https://doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2017.1314908
The geography of pre-criminal space: Epidemiological imaginations of radicalisation risk in the UK Prevent Strategy, 2007–2017
This paper explores geographical and epistemological shifts in the deployment of the UK Prevent strategy, 2007 - 2017. Counter-radicalisation policies of the Labour governments (2006 - 2010) focused heavily upon resilience-building activities in residential communities. They borrowed from historical models of crime prevention and public health to imagine radicalisation risk as an epidemiological concern in areas showing a 2% or higher demography …
Introduction: 10 Years of Critical Studies on Terrorism
When the editors of Critical Studies on Terrorism wrote their introduction to the inaugural issue in April 2008, they noted that “terrorism” was a “growth industry” which generated a huge amount of social and political activity, and affected an extensive list of areas of social and cultural life (Breen Smyth et al, 2008: 1). They also noted that there was a yawning gap between the actual material threat posed by terrorists, and the level of inves…
Counter-Terrorism and the Counterfactual: Producing the 'Radicalisation' Discourse and the UK PREVENT Strategy
This article interrogates the production of the 'radicalisation' discourse which underpins efforts to govern 'terrorism' pre-emptively through the UK's PREVENT strategy. British counter-terrorism currently relies upon the invention of 'radicalisation' and related knowledge about transitions to 'terrorism' to undertake governance of communities rendered suspicious. The article argues that such conceptions make terrorism knowable and governable thr…
Algorithmic autoimmunity in the NHS: Radicalisation and the clinic
This article explores the extension of counter-radicalisation practice into the National Health Service (NHS). In the 2011 reformulation of the UK Prevent strategy, the NHS became a key sector for the identification and suppression of ‘radicalisation’. Optometrists, dentists, doctors and nurses have been incorporated into counter-terrorism and trained to report signs of radicalisation in patients and staff. This article explores how calculative m…
The geography of pre-criminal space: Epidemiological imaginations of radicalisation risk in the UK Prevent Strategy, 2007–2017
This paper explores geographical and epistemological shifts in the deployment of the UK Prevent strategy, 2007 - 2017. Counter-radicalisation policies of the Labour governments (2006 - 2010) focused heavily upon resilience-building activities in residential communities. They borrowed from historical models of crime prevention and public health to imagine radicalisation risk as an epidemiological concern in areas showing a 2% or higher demography …
The banality of counterterrorism “after, after 9/11”? Perspectives on the Prevent duty from the UK health care sector
Since 2015, the UK healthcare sector sector has (along with education and social care) been responsibilised for noticing signs of radicalisation and reporting patients to the Prevent programme. The Prevent Duty frames the integration of healthcare professionals into the UK's counterterrorism effort as the banal extension of safeguarding. But safeguarding has previously been framed as the protection of children, and adults with care and support ne…
Survivor Trees and memorial groves: Vegetal commemoration of victims of terrorism in Europe and the United States
In commemorations of human lives lost in terrorism, European and American memorials increasingly appeal to the aesthetics of 'nature' to symbolise societal regrowth. This article interrogates the ironic and ontological registers involved in commemorating human life through vegetal symbols, paying particular attention to the World Trade Center site in Manhattan. Memorials traditionally conceive of human life as distinct from material and living ec…
Curating conflict: Political Violence in Museums, Memorials, and Exhibitions
Amidst the protest movements sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hand of police officers in Minneapolis in May 2020, anti-racist demonstrators have taken over prominent statues evoking people and systems that supported the enslavement of people of colour. In Richmond, Virginia, the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee became a site of confrontations between protesters and the police (Schneider 2020). Imposing themselves as co-curat…
Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Theory and the ‘Naturalistic Fallacy’
This article problematizes how Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) utilizes Coxian and Frankfurt School Critical Theory to support an emancipatory project. The article broadly takes the example of CTS to illustrate the dangers of the ‘pearl fishing’ method, occasionally used within critical international relations, where a section of a philosophical position is appropriated without regard for the whole. As Horkheimerian Critical Theory relies upon a…
Reinventing prevention or exposing the gap? False positives in UK terrorism governance and the quest for pre-emption
This article considers the developments within UK counterterrorism strategy between the Prevention of Terrorism Acts (PTAs) and the recent (2011) reworking of CONTEST. It argues that the performance of prevention within British counterterrorism policy has changed to favour pre-emptive measures, deployed in accordance with knowledge produced about terrorism ‘risk’. However, this shift has been accompanied by the continuation of certain practices o…
Securing through the failure to secure? The ambiguity of resilience at the bombsite
Resilience discourses resignify uncertainty and insecurity as the means to attain security. Security failure is resignified as productive and becomes part of the story about security learning and improvements in anticipatory capability. In this article, I explore questions of failure mediation and ‘securing through insecurity’. If resilience policies suggest that failure and insecurity can be mediated and redeployed in the cause of success, what …
Rituals of world politics: On (Visual) Practices Disordering Things
Rituals are customarily muted into predictable routines aimed to stabilise social orders and limit conflict. As a result, their magic lure recedes into the background, and the unexpected and disruptive elements are downplayed. Our collaborative contribution counters this move by foregrounding rituals of world politics as social practices with notable disordering effects. We engage a series of ‘world pictures’ to show the worlding and disruptive w…
A moral education? British Values, colour-blindness, and preventing terrorism
The Prevent Strategy tasks the British education sector with preventing radicalisation and extremism. It defines extremism as opposition to fundamental British Values and requires schools to promote these values and refer students and staff believed to be vulnerable to radicalisation. Little research examining the enactment of the Prevent and British Values curriculum has included students. To fill this gap, we investigated how students, teachers…
Affecting Terrorism: Laughter, Lamentation, and Detestation as Drives to Terrorism Knowledge
The contemporary fascination with terrorism in Anglo-American popular culture, political discourse, news reportage, and beyond is boundless and well documented. In this article, we explore contemporary productions of terrorism as the outcome of three drives to knowledge: laugher, lamentation, and detestation. Drawing on a range of social and cultural practices—including jokes, street art, film, memorial projects, elite rhetoric, and abuse scandal…
The long history of prevention: Social Defence, security and anticipating future crimes in the era of ‘penal welfarism’
Using a combination of documentary and archival research methods, this article explores the development of Social Defence criminology across the 19th and 20th centuries—highlighting the influence the ‘new’ Social Defence movement had upon the United Nations' and Council of Europe's international crime policy programmes. By exploring the integration of Social Defence within these international programmes, the article is able to challenge several l…
Forgetting Isis: Enmity, Drive and Repetition in Security Discourse
This paper explores the reconstitution and repetition of threat imaginaries in security discourse, with particular focus on the War on Terror era. Upon vanquishing the enemy (whether an individual militant or militant group) no tangible increase in ‘security’ is claimed by securitising actors. Instead, the security apparatus turns away and reconstructs the figuration of insecurity elsewhere. Al Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS replace each other as si…
Multi-agency counter-terrorism in Britain and Norway: Intelligence agencies and the administration of welfare
This article explores the emergence of new counter-terrorism programmes in the Britain and Norway through which intelligence and security agencies administer welfare. Support and resources are covertly allocated to persons identified as potential threats, through multi-agency structures led by intelligence and security agencies. Unlike Countering Violent Extremism programmes, this multi-agency management is not led by the local municipality; nor …
Rehabilitation within pre-crime interventions: The hybrid criminology of social crime prevention and countering violent extremism
Criminological literature frequently argues that the rehabilitative penological paradigm of the 20th century (‘penal welfarism’) has been replaced by pre-crime, risk-based, ‘new penology’. Under the conditions of social and economic neoliberalism, it is claimed, the commitment to rehabilitating individuals has been withdrawn. In this article, we explore the curious persistence of rehabilitation—enacted within crime prevention and countering-viole…
Designing the Pentagon Memorial: Gendered statecraft, heroic victimhood and site authenticity in War on Terror commemoration
How does a memorial curate an image of conflict when it is dwarfed by 6.5million square feet of the Department of Defense, when it is tasked with commemorating simultaneous military and civilian deaths, and when its public access consists of a sliver cut through one of the most secure sites on earth? Given the uniquely inconvenient siting of the Pentagon Memorial, this article argues that the Pentagon Memorial was itself curated by two memorial g…
Introduction: 10 Years of Critical Studies on Terrorism
When the editors of Critical Studies on Terrorism wrote their introduction to the inaugural issue in April 2008, they noted that “terrorism” was a “growth industry” which generated a huge amount of social and political activity, and affected an extensive list of areas of social and cultural life (Breen Smyth et al, 2008: 1). They also noted that there was a yawning gap between the actual material threat posed by terrorists, and the level of inves…
Picasso at the Bombsite: Whither Resilient Place
Places are targeted for terrorist attacks because they are symbolic: they mean something. Anders Breivik’s attacks of 22nd July 2011, for example, targeted Norway’s pre-eminent site for left-wing activism, Utoya island, and the Government Quarter in Oslo. Similarly, the redevelopment of such sites focuses on consolidating the meanings of places as symbols of national unity and the overcoming of trauma. Place is significant to both terrorism and p…
What Drives Counter-Extremism? The Extent of P/CVE Policies in the West and Their Structural Correlates
Counter-extremism (P/CVE) policies have shot to global prominence rapidly, yet there are large discrepancies in their implementation both between, and inside, countries. In this paper, we construct and present a robust index of P/CVE policies in Western countries (N = 38), based on data submitted by national experts, which we then use to test three hypothesized structural correlates of the extent of P/CVE implementation: threat of terrorism (meas…
Building a New Utøya ; Re-Placing the Oslo Bombsite—Counterfactual Resilience at Postterrorist Sites
Resilience strategies aim to build “resilience” before disasters strike; utilizing preemptive techniques to predict emergencies and prepare systems to manage their consequences. But what can we learn about resilience from responses to disasters that have already happened? This article draws on fieldwork at postterrorist sites in Norway: the Oslo Government Quarter and Utøya island. While resilience policy develops plans for infrastructural recove…
Devolution and the Prevent Strategy in Scotland: Constitutional Politics and the Path of Scottish P/CVE
This paper explores the implementation of the ‘Prevent Duty’ in Scotland. Using archival research into Parliamentary debates, as well as research interviews with Scottish government representatives and healthcare professionals, the paper sheds light on the constitutional politics surrounding the Counterterrorism and Security Act 2015 which resulted in the markedly different applications of Prevent between England and Scotland. The divergence of t…
The political use of victimhood: Spanish collective memory of ETA through the war on terror paradigm
Victims have become a topic of scholarly debate in conflict studies, especially regarding the impact of their activism on the evolution and termination of violence. Victims of terrorism are now enlisted within counter-terrorism, given their moral authority as spokespeople for counter-narratives and de-escalation. Our research explores how Spanish terrorism victims’ associations have evolved across eras of political violence and how they mediate t…
Memory Wound: Architectural controversies in Norway after the 22 July attacks
Le 22 juillet 2011, les attentats d'Oslo et Utøya, perpétrés par Anders Breivik tuèrent 77 personnes. Des projets de mémoriaux nationaux en leur hommage furent abandonnés en 2017 suite à d'importantes protestations. À partir de multiples visites sur les sites concernés et d'entretiens avec des protagonistes clés, cet article explore ces controverses mémorielles norvégiennes. Le travail de Maurice Halbwachs y est mobilisé afin de comprendre en quo…
Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Theory and the ‘Naturalistic Fallacy’
This article problematizes how Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) utilizes Coxian and Frankfurt School Critical Theory to support an emancipatory project. The article broadly takes the example of CTS to illustrate the dangers of the ‘pearl fishing’ method, occasionally used within critical international relations, where a section of a philosophical position is appropriated without regard for the whole. As Horkheimerian Critical Theory relies upon a…
Vi ricordate la rivoluzione? Politica della memoria e militanza tra Cipro e Italia
This article discusses interview material obtained on fieldwork visits to the Republic of Cyprus and Italy between 2009 and 2010. Ex-militants from four clandestine groups (EOKA, Brigate Rosse, Prima Linea and Proletari Armati per il Comunismo) were asked to speak about their entry to and participation in those organisations. The article reflects on how the memories of EOKA and anni di piombo exmilitants reflect their post-conflict situations. Vi…
Reinventing prevention or exposing the gap? False positives in UK terrorism governance and the quest for pre-emption
This article considers the developments within UK counterterrorism strategy between the Prevention of Terrorism Acts (PTAs) and the recent (2011) reworking of CONTEST. It argues that the performance of prevention within British counterterrorism policy has changed to favour pre-emptive measures, deployed in accordance with knowledge produced about terrorism ‘risk’. However, this shift has been accompanied by the continuation of certain practices o…
Counter-Terrorism and the Counterfactual: Producing the 'Radicalisation' Discourse and the UK PREVENT Strategy
This article interrogates the production of the 'radicalisation' discourse which underpins efforts to govern 'terrorism' pre-emptively through the UK's PREVENT strategy. British counter-terrorism currently relies upon the invention of 'radicalisation' and related knowledge about transitions to 'terrorism' to undertake governance of communities rendered suspicious. The article argues that such conceptions make terrorism knowable and governable thr…
Politics of Violence: Militancy, International Politics, Killing in the name
Introduction Chapter 1. Killing in the Name - Inflicting Political Injuries Chapter 2. Revolutions do not happen: Contemporary Politics and Resistance in Ex-militant Memories Chapter 3. Rupture, 'the Event' and Linearity in Testimony: To the Victor go the Spoils Chapter 4. Subjects of Victory and Defeat Chapter 5. Revolutions do not happen: Global Politics and Legibility Conclusion. The paradox of the political
Politics of Violence: Militancy, International Politics, Killing in the Name
Critical thinkers like Foucault, Benjamin, Derrida and Žižek have long challenged the liberal separation of violence and politics by highlighting the implicit violence within political and economic structures. But in an era of international terrorism and counter-terrorism, should we not also reverse the question to ask ‘what is political about violence?’ Using interviews with ex-militants from Italian leftist struggle of the 1970s and the Cypriot…
Counter-Radicalisation: Critical perspectives
This book offers a wide-ranging and critical examination of recent counter-radicalisation policies, using case studies from several countries. Counter-radicalisation policies, such as the UK ‘Prevent’ strategy, have been highly controversial and increasingly criticised since their introduction. In this edited volume, voices from disciplines including sociology, political science, criminology and International Relations are brought together to add…
Step forward, please
The foundational masquerade
This chapter examines lacunae within the masquerade and offers sight of death-effacement which is obscured from view. Security performs the masquerade of continuity and coherence by thinking life against death. The chapter examines security as sociology of death and explores the practices performed to alleviate the ontological disruption of death, destruction and mortality. Like the funeral director performing rituals upon the deceased body, secu…
Building a New Utøya ; Re-Placing the Oslo Bombsite—Counterfactual Resilience at Postterrorist Sites
Resilience strategies aim to build “resilience” before disasters strike; utilizing preemptive techniques to predict emergencies and prepare systems to manage their consequences. But what can we learn about resilience from responses to disasters that have already happened? This article draws on fieldwork at postterrorist sites in Norway: the Oslo Government Quarter and Utøya island. While resilience policy develops plans for infrastructural recove…
Securing through the failure to secure? The ambiguity of resilience at the bombsite
Resilience discourses resignify uncertainty and insecurity as the means to attain security. Security failure is resignified as productive and becomes part of the story about security learning and improvements in anticipatory capability. In this article, I explore questions of failure mediation and ‘securing through insecurity’. If resilience policies suggest that failure and insecurity can be mediated and redeployed in the cause of success, what …
Picasso at the Bombsite: Whither Resilient Place
Places are targeted for terrorist attacks because they are symbolic: they mean something. Anders Breivik’s attacks of 22nd July 2011, for example, targeted Norway’s pre-eminent site for left-wing activism, Utoya island, and the Government Quarter in Oslo. Similarly, the redevelopment of such sites focuses on consolidating the meanings of places as symbols of national unity and the overcoming of trauma. Place is significant to both terrorism and p…
Death and Security: Memory and Mortality at the Bombsite
Death is simultaneously silent, and very loud, in political life. Politicians and media scream about potential threats lurking behind every corner, but academic discourse often neglects mortality. Life is everywhere in theorisation of security, but death is nowhere.Making a bold intervention into the Critical Security Studies literature, this book explores the ontological relationship between mortality and security after the Death of God – arguin…
Death and security: Memory and mortality at the bombsite
Death is simultaneously silent, and very loud, in political life. Politicians and media scream about potential threats lurking behind every corner, but academic discourse often neglects mortality. Life is everywhere in theorisation of security, but death is nowhere.Making a bold intervention into the Critical Security Studies literature, this book explores the ontological relationship between mortality and security after the Death of God – arguin…
Response to Dunlap
Algorithmic autoimmunity in the NHS: Radicalisation and the clinic
This article explores the extension of counter-radicalisation practice into the National Health Service (NHS). In the 2011 reformulation of the UK Prevent strategy, the NHS became a key sector for the identification and suppression of ‘radicalisation’. Optometrists, dentists, doctors and nurses have been incorporated into counter-terrorism and trained to report signs of radicalisation in patients and staff. This article explores how calculative m…
Neoliberalism and Terror: Critical Engagements
A Violent Elephant in the Room: Bringing Foreign Policy into Van Der Walt's Analysis of Reciprocity in the War on Terror
On viewing: The politics of looking at the corpse’: a reply
This is a reply to:Auchter, Jessica. 2017. “On viewing: the politics of looking at the corpse.” Global Discourse. 7 (2–3): 223–238. https://doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2017.1314908
The geography of pre-criminal space: Epidemiological imaginations of radicalisation risk in the UK Prevent Strategy, 2007–2017
This paper explores geographical and epistemological shifts in the deployment of the UK Prevent strategy, 2007 - 2017. Counter-radicalisation policies of the Labour governments (2006 - 2010) focused heavily upon resilience-building activities in residential communities. They borrowed from historical models of crime prevention and public health to imagine radicalisation risk as an epidemiological concern in areas showing a 2% or higher demography …
Introduction: 10 Years of Critical Studies on Terrorism
When the editors of Critical Studies on Terrorism wrote their introduction to the inaugural issue in April 2008, they noted that “terrorism” was a “growth industry” which generated a huge amount of social and political activity, and affected an extensive list of areas of social and cultural life (Breen Smyth et al, 2008: 1). They also noted that there was a yawning gap between the actual material threat posed by terrorists, and the level of inves…
In memoriam: Turning the Anthropological Gaze Onto Security Ritual
I would like to begin by thanking Chris, Jessica and Ali for their sustained and incisive engagements with the book. They have each done a wonderful job in probing the text for its connections with
Death and security: A Forum
In this forum, three scholars of resilience, biopolitics and memory come together to discuss themes raised in Death and Security: Memory and Mortality at the Bombsite (Heath-Kelly 2016 Heath-Kelly, C. 2016. Death and Security: Memory and Mortality at the Bombsite. Manchester: Manchester University Press. The book is a comparative study of the reconstruction and memorialisation of four bombsites in Europe, the US and Indonesia (the Norwegian case …
Affecting Terrorism: Laughter, Lamentation, and Detestation as Drives to Terrorism Knowledge
The contemporary fascination with terrorism in Anglo-American popular culture, political discourse, news reportage, and beyond is boundless and well documented. In this article, we explore contemporary productions of terrorism as the outcome of three drives to knowledge: laugher, lamentation, and detestation. Drawing on a range of social and cultural practices—including jokes, street art, film, memorial projects, elite rhetoric, and abuse scandal…
The banality of counterterrorism “after, after 9/11”? Perspectives on the Prevent duty from the UK health care sector
Since 2015, the UK healthcare sector sector has (along with education and social care) been responsibilised for noticing signs of radicalisation and reporting patients to the Prevent programme. The Prevent Duty frames the integration of healthcare professionals into the UK's counterterrorism effort as the banal extension of safeguarding. But safeguarding has previously been framed as the protection of children, and adults with care and support ne…
Political science (37 works) · Sociology (32 works) · Law (31 works) · Politics (21 works) · Law (19 works) · Criminology (18 works) · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence (18 works) · Terrorism (17 works) · Global Security and Public Health (16 works) · Computer Science (6 works)