Ian Slesinger

Ian Slesinger

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Doctoral Researcher

Contact details

Address
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Ian is a political geographer interested in the more-than-human implications of the military technologies used by nation-states to manage insecurity. He is conducting ESRC funded doctoral research that uses Israel’s ongoing conflict with Gaza to evaluate the complex relationship between technological apparatuses, the geopolitical constitution of territory and the political dynamics of the state. His work uses a materialist epistemology that borrows from actor-network-theory, assemblage theory and object-oriented-ontology to suggest that technologies have intrinsic affective capacities that can variably influence and constrain their agencies in relation to humans and other material agents. This approach is applied to three linked empirical studies that elucidate the technological co-production of the Israeli state by working through the territorial volume of Israel-Gaza: the aerial illustrates the regime of atmospheric governance produced through the Iron Dome missile defense system, the surfical considers the capricious political agencies of the ‘conventional’ weaponry used by Israeli military for urban warfare in Gaza, and the subterranean narrates the challenges faced by Israeli techno-scientific experts working to locate cross-border tunnels when confronted with the geophysical agency of the subsurface.

Qualifications

  • MSc (Distinction) in Modernity, Space and Place, Department of Geography, University College London
  • PGCE in Secondary School Geography, Institute of Education, University of London
  • BA in Anthropology, Reed College, USA

Biography

Ian earned an MSc with distinction in Modernity, Space and Place from University College London in 2012. He conducted his dissertation research on the everyday geopolitics of Israel’s border with Lebanon.  He has worked as a geography teacher in UK secondary schools and sixth form colleges since completing a PGCE in geography at the Institute of Education, University of London in 2009. Before undertaking a PGCE, he taught English language in Japan for two years.

Doctoral research

PhD title
Waging Safer War?: Technology, territory and the geopolitical management of security in Israel’s conflict with Gaza 2005-2016
Supervisors
Dr Julian Clark and Dr Sara Fregonese

Research

Research interests

Geopolitics, military technologies, security, borders, risk, war, actor-network-theory, Israel, the Middle East North Africa region

Other activities

Ian is a Postgraduate Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) and a member of the European Association of Israel Studies (EAIS).

Publications

Ian Slesinger (2018): A Cartography of the Unknowable: Technology, Territory and Subterranean Agencies in Israel’s Management of the Gaza Tunnels, Geopolitics, DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2017.1399878 

Slesinger, Ian. 2016. “Alterity, Security and Everyday Geopolitics at Israel’s Border with Lebanon.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 5655 (March). doi:10.1080/08865655.2015.1124246. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08865655.2015.1124246