Foreign, security and development policy
Foreign, security and development policies are a major focus for the University and for policy makers. These researchers are actively engaging with the policy process and would welcome further engagement from policy makers.

Barber Professor of Jurisprudence
Anthony Arnull specialises in the law of the European Union. He worked at the European Court of Justice from 1989-92 and was Head of Birmingham Law School between 2006 and 2009. He was Acting Head of the College of Arts & Law at Birmingham from April to August 2015. Professor Arnull is the author of The General Principles of EEC Law and the Individual (Leicester University Press, 1990); The ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0) 121 414 6295
- Email
- a.m.arnull@bham.ac.uk

Reader in Russian Foreign and Security Policy
Derek Averre has been a member of CREES since 1991, first as a Research Fellow / Senior Research Fellow working on a long-running (1991-2015) UK Government-funded project on arms control and economic transition, and latterly as Senior Lecturer and Reader.
From August 2008 to August 2012 Derek was the Director of CREES. In recent years he has been leader of a work package on a ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 6364
- Email
- d.l.averre@bham.ac.uk

Professor of Law
Deputy Head of School (Research)
Kate is an interdisciplinary scholar, with a background in law and political economy, development, and gender/sexuality studies. She joined Birmingham Law School in 2018. She is currently the Head of Research
- Email
- k.bedford@bham.ac.uk

Reader in Modern History
As a historian, I am primarily interested in how institutions and individuals respond to the challenges of war. I believe that this is best studied using an approach which is both comparative and cross-disciplinary.
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 5512
- Email
- j.f.boff@bham.ac.uk

Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies
Over the past decade I have been researching the role of gender and religion in relation to Islamic extremism, and have an interest in gender-mainstreaming countering and preventing violent extremism efforts. My current work focuses on gender, religion and resilience in global governance efforts in relation to terrorism. This is part of my larger project, Humanities for Resilience,which is ...
- Email
- k.e.brown@bham.ac.uk

Professor of Environmental Law
College Director of Global Engagement
Professor Aleksandra Cavoski’s teaching and research interests are in the areas of Environmental and EU law. She has particular interest in EU accession countries.
- Email
- a.cavoski@bham.ac.uk

Professor of Democracy and International Development
Nic Cheeseman (@fromagehomme) is Professor of Democracy at the University of Birmingham and was formerly the Director of the African Studies Centre at Oxford University. He mainly works on democracy, elections and development and has conducted fieldwork in a range of African countries including Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The articles that he has ...
- Email
- n.cheeseman@bham.ac.uk
Professor of Gender, Transitional Justice and International Criminal Law
Professor Janine Natalya Clark joined Birmingham Law School in October 2014. She was promoted to Reader in 2016 and promoted to Professor in 2018. Her research interests include conflict-related sexual violence, transitional justice, international criminal courts, resilience, ethnic conflict and reconciliation. She is currently leading a five-year European Research Council project entitled A ...
- Telephone
- 0121 414 6316
- Email
- j.n.clark@bham.ac.uk

Senior Lecturer in United States History
Tom Cutterham is a historian of Revolutionary America and the late eighteenth-century Atlantic world. He teaches the history of North America from the first English colonisations to the end of the nineteenth century, including courses on women in the American Revolution and the meaning of freedom in American history. Following his first book, Gentlemen Revolutionaries: Power and Justice in the ...
- Telephone
- 0121 414 5747
- Email
- t.cutterham@bham.ac.uk

Lecturer in Arabic and Translation Studies
Language Co-ordinator for Arabic
I am currently Head of the Arabic area of Languages for All. I am the Arabic-English-Arabic Translation Specialist and module contributor to the MA in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies.
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 5931
- Email
- a.daoudi@bham.ac.uk

Chair of Global Legal Studies
Professor de Londras’ research concerns constitutionalism, human rights and transnationalism. She is particularly interested in the role and function of rights in contentious policy fields, enquiring about whether—and if so how—rights shape the making of law and policy in complex contexts of, for example, counter-terrorism, the European Court of Human Rights, and abortion law in ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 6318
- Email
- f.delondras@bham.ac.uk

Professor of International Legal Studies
Rilka Dragneva-Lewers is Professor of International Legal Studies at Birmingham Law School. She works on regional integration, EU external policy, legal reform and international diffusion of norms with a special reference to Eastern Europe. Her recent publications focus on Eurasian economic integration and its overlaps with EU initiatives in the post-Soviet region. Rilka’s work has strong ...
- Telephone
- 0121 414 3146
- Email
- r.dragnevalewers@bham.ac.uk

Barber Professor of Law
Professor Enonchong is the author of three major practitioner works in the field of banking and commercial law. He has advised in a number of complex international commercial disputes and has acted as an arbitrator in international commercial arbitrations
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 6283
- Email
- n.e.enonchong@bham.ac.uk

Reader in Feminist Legal Studies
Máiréad Enright joined Birmingham Law School in 2016. Her research is in feminist legal studies and law and religion. She is especially interested in how patriarchal legal and religious structures can be resisted and changed. Her research in this respect looks beyond traditional methods of law reform to consider illegality, protest, private litigation, and experimental legal ...
- Telephone
- (0)121 414 9518
- Email
- m.enright@bham.ac.uk

Lecturer
Javier completed his LLB and LLM degrees at the University of Bristol. He joined Birmingham Law School in 2013. His research focuses on international criminal law, international legal theory and transitional justice with a special focus on Latin America.
- Telephone
- (0)121 414 6308
- Email
- j.s.eskauriatza@bham.ac.uk

Head of the International Development Department
Academic Director of the Governance and Social Development Resource Centre (GSDRC)
Reader in African Politics
Jonathan's research is focused on the place and agency of African states in the international system, particularly in the realm of security and conflict. He is also interested in the nature of authoritarianism and the role of ideas and legitimacy in authoritarian systems. He has a particular interest in eastern Africa and the influence of guerrilla heritage on contemporary patterns of governance, ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 5012
- Email
- j.fisher@bham.ac.uk

Professor and Professorial Research Fellow, Islamic World and Comparative Literature
Rebecca Gould is the author of Writers and Rebels: The Literature of Insurgency in the Caucasus (Yale University Press, 2016), which was awarded the University of Southern California Book Prize in Literary and Cultural Studies and the best book award by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies, and the translator of After Tomorrow the Days Disappear: Ghazals and Other Poems ...
- Email
- r.r.gould@bham.ac.uk

Senior Research Fellow in Air Power Studies
Centre for War Studies
I joined the University of Birmingham on 1st September 2008 as a Senior Research Fellow in Air Power Studies having retired from the Royal Air Force in June 2008. My career has been a mixture of practicing, studying and writing on air power and wider aspects of international relations and defence policy.
- Telephone
- +44(0)121 41 48423
- Email
- p.w.gray@bham.ac.uk

Lecturer in Modern History
My main interest lies in post war Germany, the political, social and economic reconstruction of the country (including Allied occupation policy) against the backdrop of the Cold War.
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 5759
- Email
- a.gruenbacher@bham.ac.uk

Lecturer
Dr Gulara Guliyeva has been developing a record of strong research in European Law, published in peer-reviewed journals and edited collections.
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 6322
- Email
- g.guliyeva@bham.ac.uk

Senior Lecturer in American and Canadian Studies
I’m a British/Canadian academic interested in security and intelligence in the past and present and in a US/UK/Canada context. My work has covered a range of topics, such as state surveillance against Canadian universities, UK and US counter-terrorism, a history of informants, and the world's most famous police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 6634
- Email
- s.r.hewitt@bham.ac.uk

Professor of Politics and Development
Director, Developmental Leadership Program (DLP)
Co-Director, Development Engagement Lab (DEL)
David Hudson is Professor of Politics and Development at the University of Birmingham and Director of the Developmental Leadership Program (DLP) and Co-Director of the Development Engagement Lab (DEL).
He has written widely on the politics of development, in particular on the role of coalitions, leadership and power in reform processes and how development actors can think and work politically as ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 3496
- Email
- d.e.hudson@bham.ac.uk

Senior Lecturer
Assessment and Progress Lead
Dr Adrian Hunt teaches and researches in the fields of public law, human rights, crime, and aspects of international law. He has a particular interest in legal responses to terrorism and has worked as a consultant for the Council of Europe and the OSCE on aspects of counter-terrorism law. His published work in that field has been cited by UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 6326
- Email
- a.hunt@bham.ac.uk

Professor of African Politics
Director of Research for the College of Social Sciences
Paul Jackson is a political economist working predominantly on conflict and post-conflict reconstruction. A core area of interest is decentralisation and governance and it was his extensive experience in Sierra Leone immediately following the war that led him into the area of conflict analysis and security sector reform. He was Director of the GFN-SSR and is currently an advisor to the Governance ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 7293
- Email
- p.b.jackson@bham.ac.uk

Lecturer in Modern Middle Eastern History
Director, Centre for Modern and Contemporary History
I am an historian of colonial empire with a special focus on the Middle East and the Mediterranean in the twentieth century.
I work on the discourse and politics of economic development in the French League of Nations Mandate in Syria and Lebanon, on the history of Fordism in the post-Ottoman Middle East, and on the global history of colonial commodities and natural resources.
For full details ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 41 48113
- Email
- s.jackson.1@bham.ac.uk

Senior Lecturer in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
Director of Centre for Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
Broadly speaking, my research interests lie within Islamic studies and Middle Eastern politics and history; my research interests and writings cover areas such as the socio-political study of Islam, Modern and contemporary Islamic thought, Women in Islam, Feminism and Islam, Islam in Britain, especially New Muslims, Islam and the West, Islamism and Extremism, Islamic beliefs and practices, Islam ...
- Telephone
- +44(0)121 41 58337
- Email
- h.a.jawad@bham.ac.uk

Senior Lecturer in Sikh Studies
I’ve been a lecturer at the University of Birmingham since 2002. My research encompasses a range of related topics in Sikh Studies, such as gender and Sikhism, science and Sikhism and contemporary Sikhism.
On the teaching side, I teach Introduction to Sikhism (second-year undergraduate); Placement Module (second–year undergraduate); and an MPhil(B) course on Sikh Studies, MA in ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 41 58338
- Email
- j.jhuttijohal.1@bham.ac.uk

Lecturer in Cultural Heritage Studies
An anthropologist by education, I enjoy doing interdisciplinary research. My main interest is the production of heritage in post/colonial contexts and the associated politics of history, social memory and development, including local as well as transnational relations and practices, from heritage management to tourism and the social lives of the people living near designated heritage sites.
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 5498
- Email
- h.jorgensen@bham.ac.uk
Professor in Modern History
Head of School of History and Cultures
Having graduated from the University of Düsseldorf with a degree in mathematics, history and philosophy I completed an M.Phil in International Relations and PhD in Modern History at the University of Cambridge. I took up a lectureship in European history at the University of Hull in 1993 before joining the Department of Modern History here at Birmingham in 1994.
- Telephone
- +44(0)121 414 5749
- Email
- s.lee@bham.ac.uk

Professor of Development Politics
Heather Marquette is Professor of Development Politics and is currently seconded part-time to DFID’s Research & Evidence Division as Senior Research Fellow (Governance and Conflict).
Heather’s research - which has been funded by the British Academy/Global Challenges Research Fund, DFID, DFAT and the EU - focuses on corruption and anti-corruption interventions, the politics ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 2296
- Email
- h.a.marquette@bham.ac.uk

Reader in Law
Deputy Director of Research
Dr Mavronicola researches and teaches on human rights, public law, and legal theory, as well as on the interplay between counter-terrorism and human rights and on key intersections between human rights and criminal justice. She has published on these topics in a number of journals, including the Human Rights Law Review and the Modern Law Review, and edited collections.
Between ...
- Telephone
- (0)121 414 9038
- Email
- n.mavronicola@bham.ac.uk

Professor in Law and Language
Birmingham Fellow
Professor McAuliffe’s principal area of research focuses on the relationship between law, language and translation in the EU legal order. By clarifying the ways in which language plays a key role in determining judicial outcomes at the EU level, she challenges EU scholarship to look beyond more conventional approaches to the development of a rule of law that draw on law alone. ...
- Telephone
- 0121 414 7269
- Email
- k.mcauliffe@bham.ac.uk

Lecturer
Claire’s research focuses on the political sociology of vital public service delivery in conflict-affected and divided societies. In particular, she is interested in the politics of distributive justice and procedural fairness in service delivery, and the historical processes that embed welfare provision in social contracts. She has published on how and when services become significant for ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 3120
- Email
- c.mcloughlin@bham.ac.uk

Lecturer in Law
Dr Morgan researches and teaches public law, legal theory, socio-legal theory, and human rights. She explores the interplay between law and political theory on topics such as national security, counter-terrorism, accountability, and conceptions of freedom. Her most recent publication, with Professor Fiona de Londras and Dr Jessie Blackbourn, Accountability and Review in the Counter-Terrorist ...
- Email
- l.morgan@bham.ac.uk

Emeritus Professor of Contemporary European Islam
My main research interest is Islam in Europe but I also maintain interests in Shari’a and Christian-Muslim relations in Europe and the Middle East.
- Email
- j.s.nielsen@bham.ac.uk
Research Fellow in Gender and Transitional Justice
Dr Yoana F. Nieto Valdivieso joined Birmingham Law School in September 2017. Her research interests are in Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration of combatants from a Gender Perspective, Transitional Justice, Sexual Violence in war and armed conflict, and Feminist Theories of War and Armed Conflict. Yoana is currently working with Dr Janine N. Clark on a five-year project funded by the ...
- Email
- y.f.fernandavaldivieso@bham.ac.uk

Professor of Environment and Development
Fiona's interests and experience focus on natural resource governance and management in developing country settings, particularly within inland fisheries and coastal locations in East and Southern Africa, and on exploring the links between poverty and the environment.
- Telephone
- +44 (0) 121 414 3061
- Email
- f.s.nunan@bham.ac.uk

Reader
Dr Alexander Orakhelashvili has taught and researched public international law at four British universities over the past 18 years. His teaching also includes elements of criminal law and jurisprudence. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences and seminars on developments in public international law, and has given invited papers at the events and conferences held in UK, USA, France, ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 6284
- Email
- a.orakhelashvili@bham.ac.uk

Birmingham Fellow
Martin Ottmann is a political scientist working on civil wars, peace agreements and post-war development. His research combines advanced statistical research methods with qualitative case studies.
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 415 1076
- Email
- m.ottmann@bham.ac.uk

Senior Lecturer in American and International Politics
Dr Adam Quinn has policy expertise in US politics and foreign policy. He served as a trustee and executive committee member of BISA in 2010 and 2011. He was founding editor of the BISA magazine, International Studies Today, and of its USFP working group counterpart, Argentia.
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 5313
- Email
- a.j.quinn@bham.ac.uk

Professor of Cultural Heritage
Director, Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage
I am Director of the Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage - a major inter-disciplinary research and graduate Institute working with the World Heritage Site and associated museums of Ironbridge.
My interests lie in how we produce and consume categories of heritage within changing cultural and cross-cultural contexts. I am particularly interested in how tourists experience ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 3119
- Email
- m.d.robinson@bham.ac.uk

Reader in African History and Anthropology
I work on the history and anthropology of twentieth-century West Africa, with a focus on Hausa and Tuareg societies in the Republic of Niger. My recent publications focus on slavery; emancipation; labour; migrations; governance; and the history and impacts of planned development.
Personal website: www.benedettarossi.com
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 41 47343
- Email
- b.rossi@bham.ac.uk

Professor of Islamic Studies
I research modern, contemporary and classical forms of Islam, employing both historical and ethnographic research methods. My interests include modern Islamic reform, Shia Islam, Sufism, Islamic messianism and as well as the historical and contemporary presence of Muslims in Europe. I am particularly interested in making current theories and methods in Religious Studies relevant to the academic ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 41 43082
- Email
- o.scharbrodt@bham.ac.uk
Lecturer in South Asian History
I am historian of colonial South Asia with particular interest in the political and social history of the British empire. My work explores the critical importance of territorial contestation in shaping colonial rule during the long eighteenth century and articulations of sovereignty in colonial South Asia. I am also interested in gender history and law across the British empire
- Email
- m.sehgal@bham.ac.uk

Professor of International Law & Human Rights
Deputy Head of School (Staffing and Strategy)
Shahab teaches and researches in international law and human rights with special focus on the history and theory of international law, ethnicity and nationalism, and human rights. His teaching and research is informed by critical, postcolonial, and TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) scholarship. He is the author of Ethnicity and International Law: Histories, Politics and ...
- Telephone
- 0121 414 9197
- Email
- m.shahabuddin@bham.ac.uk

Lecturer in Islamic Studies
My research focuses on the dynamics and trajectories of gender in Islam within the context of contemporary diasporic and transnational Muslim women’s spaces. I work on Muslim women communities in Europe and their transnational links to the Middle East. I also have a particular research interest in the authority and leadership of Muslim women and the changing nature of women’s ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 9180
- Email
- y.shanneik@bham.ac.uk

Emeritus Professor of Christianity and Islam
Nadir Dinshaw Professor of Interreligious Relations
For many years one of my specialist interests has been the history of religious thought in Islam and the structure of Islamic religious thinking. A particular aspect of this is relations between Muslims and followers of other faiths, especially Christianity. I have made this a major topic of my research and writing.
- Telephone
- +44 (0) 121 415 8373
- Email
- d.r.thomas.1@bham.ac.uk

Senior Lecturer in Law
Director of Postgraduate Research
Dr Bosko Tripkovic researches and teaches in the areas of jurisprudence, constitutional theory, constitutional law, and EU law. His book The Metaethics of Constitutional Adjudication (Oxford University Press 2017) develops an original theory of the role of values in constitutional reasoning, and combines insights from comparative constitutional law and metaethics. Dr Tripkovic has won the ...
- Telephone
- 0121 414 7501
- Email
- b.tripkovic@bham.ac.uk

Professor of European Law and Policy
Director, Institute of European Law
The research of Martin Trybus aims to make a contribution to the understanding and development of the Law of the European Union, especially its economic and constitutional aspects, to establish ‘European Union Defence and Security Law’ as a separate legal subject, and to contribute to the understanding and development of European Union Public Procurement Law.
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 6330
- Email
- m.trybus@bham.ac.uk

Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics
Head of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion for the School of Government
Gerasimos Tsourapas is Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Birmingham. His research examines the politics of migration in the Middle East and the broader Global South via non-Western perspectives. He is the author of The Politics of Migration in Modern Egypt – Strategies for Regime Survival in Autocracies (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and Migration Diplomacy in ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 6263
- Email
- g.tsourapas@bham.ac.uk

Senior Lecturer in Law
Deputy Head of School (Education)
Dr Ben Warwick’s research explores how economic factors affect human rights (and especially socio-economic rights). He is interested in the ways that laws and the institutions that enforce them change under such pressures. This has led him to write on the related questions of crisis, neoliberalism, and the reversal of rights protections. He is a specialist in international human rights, the ...
- Telephone
- 0121 414 6288
- Email
- b.t.warwick@bham.ac.uk
Lecturer in the History of Warfare and Conflict
I am interested in all aspects of the history of war, but with a particular focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My research explores British military history, military thought and strategy in this period: in particular, it covers British colonial warfare, counterinsurgency, the First World War and the Second World War. My teaching includes these topics, as well as ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 41 43203
- Email
- d.whittingham@bham.ac.uk

John Ferguson Professor of Global Ethics
Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor Research (Impact)
Professor Heather Widdows is the John Ferguson Professor of Global Ethics and the Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research Impact. In this role she seeks to support and extend the impact of Birmingham's research across policy, cultural and industrial sectors. Her track-record shows her commitment to public engagement and work with policy makers. As such she has served as a ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 8399
- Email
- h.widdows@bham.ac.uk

Professor of International Security
A political scientist by background, Stefan Wolff specialises in the management of contemporary security challenges, especially in the prevention and settlement of ethnic conflicts and civil wars and in post-conflict state-building in deeply divided and war-torn societies.
- Telephone
- +44 (0)121 414 8230
- Email
- s.wolff@bham.ac.uk

Interdisciplinary Professorial Fellow in Law, Ethics and Informatics
Karen Yeung joined Birmingham Law School and the University of Birmingham’s School of Computer Science as Interdisciplinary Professorial Fellow in Law, Ethics and Informatics in January 2018.
Karen is actively involved in several technology policy and related initiatives in the UK and worldwide, including those concerned with the governance of AI, one of her key research ...
- Telephone
- +44 (0) 121 414 6298
- Email
- k.yeung@bham.ac.uk