Lauren Wilcox
Biographic Data
| ID | 3688049 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lauren Wilcox |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lauren |
| FAMILY NAME | Wilcox |
| SIGNATURE | WILCOX L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6598-1733 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 202 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Forum on Charlotte Epstein’s Birth of the State: The Place of the Body in Crafting Modern Politics
In this forum, four authors discuss Charlotte Epstein’s book Birth of the State: The Place of the Body in Crafting Modern Politics published in 2021. After having situated this book in a wider context of international and political thought, Jens Bartelson discusses the role of constructivism in its argument along with the relationship between continuity and change implicit in the account. Nina Krickel-Choi focuses on how the duality of mind and b…
UX Matters: The Critical Role of UX in Responsible AI
Positive user experience (UX) is an important goal in product design. Positive long-term UX is believed to improve customer loyalty, therefore being vital for continuous commercial success. Most UX research investigates momentary or short-term UX
Black feminism at the end of the world: An interview with Zakiyyah Iman Jackson
Becoming shield, unbecoming human
Winning? The Politics of Victory in an Era of Endless War
Two decades after the “war on terror” was first waged, there is little conceptual clarity about what it means to win a war. Indeed, despite the burgeoning literature on endless war and victory, there is no substantive engagement with how these themes intersect when thinking ethically about the question of war and what passes for peace. This forum seeks to spark a conversation to address this gap. Bringing together theorists and ethicists working …
IR otherwise
Additional informationNotes on contributorsLauren WilcoxDr. Lauren Wilcox is Associate Professor of Gender Studies, Director of the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, and a fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge. She has published widely on feminist/queer theory and International Relations. Her forthcoming book is War Beyond the Human: Gender, Race, and Political Violence in a Posthuman Age. Email: [email protected]
Forum: Thinking Theoretically in Unsettled Times: Covid-19 and Beyond
This collection of essays seeks to theorize the politics of the COVID-19 pandemic in international relations (IR). The contributions are driven by questions such as: How can theorizing help us understand these unsettled times? What kind of crisis is this? What shapes its politics? What remains the same and what has been unsettled or unsettling? In addressing such questions, each of the participants considers what we may already know about the pan…
Colonial Lives of the Carceral Archipelago: Rethinking the Neoliberal Security State
Mass incarceration, police brutality, and border controls are part and parcel of the everyday experiences of marginalized and racialized communities across the world. Recent scholarship in international relations, sociology, and geography has examined the prevalence of these coercive practices through the prism of 'disciplinary,' 'penal,' or 'authoritarian' neoliberalism. In this collective discussion, we argue that although this literature has b…
Nothing about me without me: Investigating the Health Information Access Needs of Adolescent Patients
This forum is dedicated to personal health in all its many facets: decision making, goal setting, celebration, discovery, reflection, and coordination, among others. We look at innovations in interactive technologies and how they help address current critical healthcare challenges. --- Yunan Chen, Editor
Politics of the Living Dead: Race and Exceptionalism in the Apocalypse
The zombie, as a Western pop culture icon, has taken up residence in International Relations. Used both humorously and as a serious teaching tool, many scholars and professors of IR have written of the zombie as a useful figure for teaching IR theory in an engaging manner, and have used zombie outbreaks to analyse the responses of the international community during catastrophe, invasion, and natural disasters. The authors of this article would li…
Practising gender, queering theory
The development of a ‘practice turn’ in International Relations promises to reconstitute IR theory around the study of embodied practices. Despite occasional references to Judith Butler’s work, the contributions of feminist and queer theory are under recognised in existing work. In this piece I note the distinctive approach to gender as a practice represented by Butler and other feminist/queer theorists for its emphasis on intelligibility and fai…
Drones, Swarms and Becoming-Insect: Feminist Utopias and Posthuman Politics
Insects and 'the swarm' as metaphors and objects of research have inspired works in the genres of science fiction and horror; social and political theorists; and the development of war-fighting technologies such as 'drone swarms', which function as robot/insect hybrids. Contemporary developments suggest that the future of warfare will not be 'robots' as technological, individualised substitutions for idealised (masculine) warfighters, but warfigh…
Securing Methods, Practicing Critique: A Review of Methods and Critical Security Studies
“There is a point at which methods devour themselves” (Fanon 1952, 12). Almost 20 years since the publication of Krause and Williams's edited volume Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (1997), critical security studies (CSS) has reached a moment in which critiques of more traditional or mainstream modes of studying the politics of war, security, and violence are supplemented by a great deal of explicit attention to their methods and met…
Embodying algorithmic war: Gender, race, and the posthuman in drone warfare
Through a discussion of drone warfare, and in particular the massacre of 23 people in the Uruzgan province in Afghanistan in 2010, I argue that drone warfare is both embodied and embodying. Drawing from posthuman feminist theorists such as Donna Haraway and N Katherine Hayles, I understand the turn toward data and machine intelligence not as an other-than-human process of decisionmaking that deprives humans of sovereignty, but as a form of embodi…
Drone warfare and the making of bodies out of place
The seemingly limitless nature of drone warfare in terms of surveillance and territorial and lethal capacities suggest that this form of violence not only harms and kills certain bodies while keeping other bodies safe, but more profoundly, reorganizes space to produce certain bodies as ‘killable’ enemies. The techno-political processes of drone warfare including ‘pattern of life’ criteria materialize the stateless, formless bodies of enemies in o…
Making Bodies Matter in IR
Neumann’s call for taking bodies more seriously in IR is a welcome intervention but is framed problematically. Through a reading of Butler, I argue that Neumann’s invocation of a ‘physical body’ that needs to be brought into IR is itself an object of discourse, and that Butler would deny the distinction Neumann makes between the social and physical body. I also discuss Neumann’s call for a dialogue with the physical sciences in reference to recen…
The Image before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Civilian and Combatant
Explosive Bodies and Bounded States: Abjection and the Embodied Practice of Suicide Bombing
The bodies produced by the violent practice of suicide bombing are a source of horror and disgust. They are, in feminist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva's concept, abject: that which defies borders and is expelled to create the self. As 'abject bodies', suicide bombers' bodies frustrate attempts at calculation and rational control of security risks, and, in their mutilated flesh, expose as unstable the idea of the body as a whole with clearly define…
Beyond Sex/Gender: The Feminist Body of Security
What makes Feminist Security Studies such an exciting field for me is the depth and diversity of feminists grappling with key issues of the politics of war, peace, and security who are also concerned with sovereignty and autonomy, the meaning and nature of violence, and the connections among violence, subjectivity, and embodiment. Feminists across the disciplines have done much to render problematic the equation of bodies and subjects for their o…
Gendering the Cult of the Offensive
Theorists of the offense-defense balance frequently note that perceptions of technology, as well as military doctrine, play a role in states' perception of offense dominance or the “cult of the offensive.” I argue that gender may constitute the missing link in explaining this misperception and suggest three possible areas of investigation. First, the perceptions and uses of technologies are dependent upon gendered ideologies which encouraged disa…
Embodying algorithmic war: Gender, race, and the posthuman in drone warfare
Through a discussion of drone warfare, and in particular the massacre of 23 people in the Uruzgan province in Afghanistan in 2010, I argue that drone warfare is both embodied and embodying. Drawing from posthuman feminist theorists such as Donna Haraway and N Katherine Hayles, I understand the turn toward data and machine intelligence not as an other-than-human process of decisionmaking that deprives humans of sovereignty, but as a form of embodi…
Colonial Lives of the Carceral Archipelago: Rethinking the Neoliberal Security State
Mass incarceration, police brutality, and border controls are part and parcel of the everyday experiences of marginalized and racialized communities across the world. Recent scholarship in international relations, sociology, and geography has examined the prevalence of these coercive practices through the prism of 'disciplinary,' 'penal,' or 'authoritarian' neoliberalism. In this collective discussion, we argue that although this literature has b…
Drone warfare and the making of bodies out of place
The seemingly limitless nature of drone warfare in terms of surveillance and territorial and lethal capacities suggest that this form of violence not only harms and kills certain bodies while keeping other bodies safe, but more profoundly, reorganizes space to produce certain bodies as ‘killable’ enemies. The techno-political processes of drone warfare including ‘pattern of life’ criteria materialize the stateless, formless bodies of enemies in o…
Explosive Bodies and Bounded States: Abjection and the Embodied Practice of Suicide Bombing
The bodies produced by the violent practice of suicide bombing are a source of horror and disgust. They are, in feminist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva's concept, abject: that which defies borders and is expelled to create the self. As 'abject bodies', suicide bombers' bodies frustrate attempts at calculation and rational control of security risks, and, in their mutilated flesh, expose as unstable the idea of the body as a whole with clearly define…
Beyond Sex/Gender: The Feminist Body of Security
What makes Feminist Security Studies such an exciting field for me is the depth and diversity of feminists grappling with key issues of the politics of war, peace, and security who are also concerned with sovereignty and autonomy, the meaning and nature of violence, and the connections among violence, subjectivity, and embodiment. Feminists across the disciplines have done much to render problematic the equation of bodies and subjects for their o…
Politics of the Living Dead: Race and Exceptionalism in the Apocalypse
The zombie, as a Western pop culture icon, has taken up residence in International Relations. Used both humorously and as a serious teaching tool, many scholars and professors of IR have written of the zombie as a useful figure for teaching IR theory in an engaging manner, and have used zombie outbreaks to analyse the responses of the international community during catastrophe, invasion, and natural disasters. The authors of this article would li…
Practising gender, queering theory
The development of a ‘practice turn’ in International Relations promises to reconstitute IR theory around the study of embodied practices. Despite occasional references to Judith Butler’s work, the contributions of feminist and queer theory are under recognised in existing work. In this piece I note the distinctive approach to gender as a practice represented by Butler and other feminist/queer theorists for its emphasis on intelligibility and fai…
Gendering the Cult of the Offensive
Theorists of the offense-defense balance frequently note that perceptions of technology, as well as military doctrine, play a role in states' perception of offense dominance or the “cult of the offensive.” I argue that gender may constitute the missing link in explaining this misperception and suggest three possible areas of investigation. First, the perceptions and uses of technologies are dependent upon gendered ideologies which encouraged disa…
Drones, Swarms and Becoming-Insect: Feminist Utopias and Posthuman Politics
Insects and 'the swarm' as metaphors and objects of research have inspired works in the genres of science fiction and horror; social and political theorists; and the development of war-fighting technologies such as 'drone swarms', which function as robot/insect hybrids. Contemporary developments suggest that the future of warfare will not be 'robots' as technological, individualised substitutions for idealised (masculine) warfighters, but warfigh…
Making Bodies Matter in IR
Neumann’s call for taking bodies more seriously in IR is a welcome intervention but is framed problematically. Through a reading of Butler, I argue that Neumann’s invocation of a ‘physical body’ that needs to be brought into IR is itself an object of discourse, and that Butler would deny the distinction Neumann makes between the social and physical body. I also discuss Neumann’s call for a dialogue with the physical sciences in reference to recen…
Winning? The Politics of Victory in an Era of Endless War
Two decades after the “war on terror” was first waged, there is little conceptual clarity about what it means to win a war. Indeed, despite the burgeoning literature on endless war and victory, there is no substantive engagement with how these themes intersect when thinking ethically about the question of war and what passes for peace. This forum seeks to spark a conversation to address this gap. Bringing together theorists and ethicists working …
Forum: Thinking Theoretically in Unsettled Times: Covid-19 and Beyond
This collection of essays seeks to theorize the politics of the COVID-19 pandemic in international relations (IR). The contributions are driven by questions such as: How can theorizing help us understand these unsettled times? What kind of crisis is this? What shapes its politics? What remains the same and what has been unsettled or unsettling? In addressing such questions, each of the participants considers what we may already know about the pan…
Gendering the Cult of the Offensive
Theorists of the offense-defense balance frequently note that perceptions of technology, as well as military doctrine, play a role in states' perception of offense dominance or the “cult of the offensive.” I argue that gender may constitute the missing link in explaining this misperception and suggest three possible areas of investigation. First, the perceptions and uses of technologies are dependent upon gendered ideologies which encouraged disa…
Beyond Sex/Gender: The Feminist Body of Security
What makes Feminist Security Studies such an exciting field for me is the depth and diversity of feminists grappling with key issues of the politics of war, peace, and security who are also concerned with sovereignty and autonomy, the meaning and nature of violence, and the connections among violence, subjectivity, and embodiment. Feminists across the disciplines have done much to render problematic the equation of bodies and subjects for their o…
The Image before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Civilian and Combatant
Explosive Bodies and Bounded States: Abjection and the Embodied Practice of Suicide Bombing
The bodies produced by the violent practice of suicide bombing are a source of horror and disgust. They are, in feminist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva's concept, abject: that which defies borders and is expelled to create the self. As 'abject bodies', suicide bombers' bodies frustrate attempts at calculation and rational control of security risks, and, in their mutilated flesh, expose as unstable the idea of the body as a whole with clearly define…
Making Bodies Matter in IR
Neumann’s call for taking bodies more seriously in IR is a welcome intervention but is framed problematically. Through a reading of Butler, I argue that Neumann’s invocation of a ‘physical body’ that needs to be brought into IR is itself an object of discourse, and that Butler would deny the distinction Neumann makes between the social and physical body. I also discuss Neumann’s call for a dialogue with the physical sciences in reference to recen…
Drone warfare and the making of bodies out of place
The seemingly limitless nature of drone warfare in terms of surveillance and territorial and lethal capacities suggest that this form of violence not only harms and kills certain bodies while keeping other bodies safe, but more profoundly, reorganizes space to produce certain bodies as ‘killable’ enemies. The techno-political processes of drone warfare including ‘pattern of life’ criteria materialize the stateless, formless bodies of enemies in o…
Securing Methods, Practicing Critique: A Review of Methods and Critical Security Studies
“There is a point at which methods devour themselves” (Fanon 1952, 12). Almost 20 years since the publication of Krause and Williams's edited volume Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (1997), critical security studies (CSS) has reached a moment in which critiques of more traditional or mainstream modes of studying the politics of war, security, and violence are supplemented by a great deal of explicit attention to their methods and met…
Embodying algorithmic war: Gender, race, and the posthuman in drone warfare
Through a discussion of drone warfare, and in particular the massacre of 23 people in the Uruzgan province in Afghanistan in 2010, I argue that drone warfare is both embodied and embodying. Drawing from posthuman feminist theorists such as Donna Haraway and N Katherine Hayles, I understand the turn toward data and machine intelligence not as an other-than-human process of decisionmaking that deprives humans of sovereignty, but as a form of embodi…
Politics of the Living Dead: Race and Exceptionalism in the Apocalypse
The zombie, as a Western pop culture icon, has taken up residence in International Relations. Used both humorously and as a serious teaching tool, many scholars and professors of IR have written of the zombie as a useful figure for teaching IR theory in an engaging manner, and have used zombie outbreaks to analyse the responses of the international community during catastrophe, invasion, and natural disasters. The authors of this article would li…
Practising gender, queering theory
The development of a ‘practice turn’ in International Relations promises to reconstitute IR theory around the study of embodied practices. Despite occasional references to Judith Butler’s work, the contributions of feminist and queer theory are under recognised in existing work. In this piece I note the distinctive approach to gender as a practice represented by Butler and other feminist/queer theorists for its emphasis on intelligibility and fai…
Drones, Swarms and Becoming-Insect: Feminist Utopias and Posthuman Politics
Insects and 'the swarm' as metaphors and objects of research have inspired works in the genres of science fiction and horror; social and political theorists; and the development of war-fighting technologies such as 'drone swarms', which function as robot/insect hybrids. Contemporary developments suggest that the future of warfare will not be 'robots' as technological, individualised substitutions for idealised (masculine) warfighters, but warfigh…
Nothing about me without me: Investigating the Health Information Access Needs of Adolescent Patients
This forum is dedicated to personal health in all its many facets: decision making, goal setting, celebration, discovery, reflection, and coordination, among others. We look at innovations in interactive technologies and how they help address current critical healthcare challenges. --- Yunan Chen, Editor
Forum: Thinking Theoretically in Unsettled Times: Covid-19 and Beyond
This collection of essays seeks to theorize the politics of the COVID-19 pandemic in international relations (IR). The contributions are driven by questions such as: How can theorizing help us understand these unsettled times? What kind of crisis is this? What shapes its politics? What remains the same and what has been unsettled or unsettling? In addressing such questions, each of the participants considers what we may already know about the pan…
Colonial Lives of the Carceral Archipelago: Rethinking the Neoliberal Security State
Mass incarceration, police brutality, and border controls are part and parcel of the everyday experiences of marginalized and racialized communities across the world. Recent scholarship in international relations, sociology, and geography has examined the prevalence of these coercive practices through the prism of 'disciplinary,' 'penal,' or 'authoritarian' neoliberalism. In this collective discussion, we argue that although this literature has b…
Black feminism at the end of the world: An interview with Zakiyyah Iman Jackson
Becoming shield, unbecoming human
Winning? The Politics of Victory in an Era of Endless War
Two decades after the “war on terror” was first waged, there is little conceptual clarity about what it means to win a war. Indeed, despite the burgeoning literature on endless war and victory, there is no substantive engagement with how these themes intersect when thinking ethically about the question of war and what passes for peace. This forum seeks to spark a conversation to address this gap. Bringing together theorists and ethicists working …
IR otherwise
Additional informationNotes on contributorsLauren WilcoxDr. Lauren Wilcox is Associate Professor of Gender Studies, Director of the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, and a fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge. She has published widely on feminist/queer theory and International Relations. Her forthcoming book is War Beyond the Human: Gender, Race, and Political Violence in a Posthuman Age. Email: [email protected]
UX Matters: The Critical Role of UX in Responsible AI
Positive user experience (UX) is an important goal in product design. Positive long-term UX is believed to improve customer loyalty, therefore being vital for continuous commercial success. Most UX research investigates momentary or short-term UX
Forum on Charlotte Epstein’s Birth of the State: The Place of the Body in Crafting Modern Politics
In this forum, four authors discuss Charlotte Epstein’s book Birth of the State: The Place of the Body in Crafting Modern Politics published in 2021. After having situated this book in a wider context of international and political thought, Jens Bartelson discusses the role of constructivism in its argument along with the relationship between continuity and change implicit in the account. Nina Krickel-Choi focuses on how the duality of mind and b…
Sociology (15 works) · Political science (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Gender, Security, and Conflict (6 works)