Professor Nick Vaughan-Williams

Professor Nick Vaughan-Williams

Social Sciences
Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Head of the College of Social Sciences

Contact details

CoSS Hub Manager and Executive Assistant: Kate Chamberlain
k.chamberlain.1@bham.ac.uk
Address
College of Social Sciences
Muirhead Tower
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Professor Nick Vaughan-Williams FAcSS, is Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Head of the College of Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham where he is also Professor of International Politics. He holds an Honorary Professorship in Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick.

Professor Vaughan-Williams’ programme of research - supported by grants from the British Academy, UK Economic and Social Research Council, and Leverhulme Trust - focuses on the international politics of borders, migration, and security. He is a former recipient of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for outstanding research in Politics and International Studies and Gold Winner of the Association for Borderlands Studies Past Presidents' Book Award. His research findings have been presented to the EU Commission, Frontex, the UK Cabinet Office, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the UK Home Office, and the Maltese Presideny. 

Professor Vaughan-Williams' latest research monographs are Vernacular Border Security and Reclaiming Migration (with Vicki Squire, Nina Perkowski, and Dallal Stevens). Earlier books include Europe's Border Crisis, Everyday Security Threats (with Daniel Stevens) and Border Politics. He is also co-author (with Columba Peoples) of Critical Security Studies, now in its third edition, and founding co-editor (with Jenny Edkins) of the Routledge Interventions book series which has published more than 150 titles in the interdisciplinary study of international politics. He is on the Editorial Boards of Political Geography and Alternatives: Global, Local, Political.

He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and Chair of the Academy’s Forum for Leaders in Social Sciences.

Biography

Before joining the University of Birmingham, Professor Vaughan-Williams was at the University of Warwick for 14 years, latterly as Vice-Provost and Chair of the Faculty of Social Sciences (2021-24) and Head of the Department of Politics and International Studies (2015-18 and 2019-21). As Professor of International Security he was Director of the MA in International Relations and contributed to the delivery of undergraduate and postgraduate modules in International Relations and Security. He has supervised/examined more than 30 PhD students and acted as mentor for multiple post-doctoral researchers funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Earlier in his career, he held lectureships in International Relations at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and the University of Exeter. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and holds degrees in Modern History and International Relations from the University of Oxford (BA and MA), the University of Warwick (MA), and the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (PhD).

Research

Externally-funded research programmes as PI/Co-I

(2023-28) Economic and Social Research Council, Impact Accelerator Account, Round 3: Warwick (ES/X004635/1). Discipline Lead/Co-I from 2023-24.

(2019-23) Economic and Social Research Council, Impact Accelerator Account, Round 2: Warwick (ES/T502054/1). PI from 2021-23.

(2016-19) The Leverhulme Trust, 'Everyday Narratives of European Border Security and Insecurity' (2015 Philip Leverhulme Prize in Politics and International Relations, PLP-2015-081) (PI).

(2015-17) Economic and Social Research Council, 'Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by Boat: Mapping and Documenting Migratory Journeys and Experiences' (ES/N013646/1) (Co-I), with Vicki Squire (PI), Dallal Stevens, Angeliki Dimitriadi, and Maria Pisani.

(2013-15) Economic and Social Research Council, Arts and Humanities Research Council, Dstl, 'Science and Security: Research Impact and Co-Production of Knowledge' (ES/K011367/1) (Co-I), with Jon Coaffee (PI), Stuart Croft, George Christou, and Oz Hassan.

(2012-13) Economic and Social Research Council, 'Public Perceptions of Threat in Britain: Security in an Age of Austerity' (ES/J004596/1) (Co-I), with Daniel Stevens (PI).

(2011) British Academy-National Science Foundation Taiwan, 'European-East Asian Critical Border Studies' (JP100035) (PI), with Joyce C. H. Liu.

(2007-8) British Academy, 'Lines in the Sand? Non-Territorial Bordering Practices in Global Politics' (SG-50847) (PI), with Noel Parker.

(2003-6) Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, 'Border Studies Research Studentship', Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. 

Publications

Books

Single-authored

(2021, 2023) N. Vaughan-Williams, Vernacular Border Security: Citizens' Narratives of Europe's 'Migration Crisis' (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press).

(2015, 2017) N. Vaughan-Williams, Europe's Border Crisis: Biopolitical Security and Beyond (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press).

(2009, 2012) N. Vaughan-Williams, Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Gold Winner, 2011 Association for Borderlands Studies Past Presidents' Book Award.

Co-authored

(2021) V. Squire, N. Perkowski, D. Stevens, and N. Vaughan-Williams, Reclaiming Migration: Voices from Europe's 'Migrant Crisis' (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

(2021) C. Peoples and N. Vaughan-Williams, Critical Security Studies: An Introduction, Third Edition (London and New York: Routledge).

(2016) D. Stevens and N. Vaughan-Williams, Everyday Security Threats: Perceptions, Experiences, Consequences  (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

Co-edited

(2014) J. C. H. Liu and N. Vaughan-Williams (Eds) European-East Asian Borders in Translation (London and New York: Routledge).

(2013) N. Parker and N. Vaughan-Williams (Eds) Critical Border Studies (London and New York: Routledge).

(2012) C. Peoples and N. Vaughan-Williams (Eds) Major Works: Critical Security Studies 4 Volume Set (London and New York: Routledge). Vol. 1: Defining Security, Vol. 2: Broadening Security, Vol. 3: Deepening Security, Vol. 4: Extending Security.

(2009) J. Edkins and N. Vaughan-Williams (Eds) Critical Theorists and International Relations (London and New York: Routledge). Translated into Bahasa Indonesian by Pustaka Pelajar Publishing Company, 2014.

(2008) A. Closs Stephens and N. Vaughan-Williams (Eds) Terrorism and the Politics of Response (London and New York: Routledge).

Journal articles

(Forthcoming) M. Zehfuss and N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘From Security-Space to Time-Race: Reimagining Borders and Migration in Global Politics’, International Political Sociology.

(2021) D. Stevens, S. Bulmer, S. Banducci, and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Male Warriors and Worried Women? Understanding Gender and Perceptions of Security Threats', European Journal of International Security 6(1), pp. 44-65.

(2020) N. Vaughan-Williams and M. Pisani, 'Migrating Borders, Bordering Lives: Everyday Geographies of Ontological Security and Insecurity in Malta', Social and Cultural Geography 21(5), pp. 651-673.

(2018) N. Vaughan-Williams and G. Lofflmann, 'Vernacular Imaginaries of European Border Security Among Citizens: From Walls to Information Management', European Journal of International Security, 3(3), pp. 382-400.

(2017) H. Crawley, A. Jeffrey, M. Kuus, F. McConnell, A. Smith, and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Interventions: Europe's Political Futures', Political Geography, 60 (September), pp. 261-271.

(2017) A. Little and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Stopping Boats, Saving Lives, Securing Subjects: Humanitarian Borders in Europe and Australia', European Journal of International Relations, 23(3) (August), pp. 533-556.

(2017) S. Croft and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Fit for Purpose? Fitting Ontological Security Studies "into" the Discipline of International Relations: Towards a Vernacular Turn?', Cooperation and Conflict, 52(1) (March), pp. 12-30.

(2016) N. Vaughan-Williams and D. Stevens, ‘Vernacular Theories of Everyday (In)Security: The Disruptive Potential of Non-Elite Knowledge’, Security Dialogue, 47(1) (January), pp. 40-58.

(2016) D. Stevens and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Citizens and Security Threats: Issues, Perceptions, and Consequences Beyond the National Frame', British Journal of Political Science, 46(1) (January), pp. 149-175.

(2015) N. Vaughan-Williams, '"We are not animals!" Humanitarian Border Security and Zoopolitical Spaces in EUrope', Political Geography, 45 (March), pp. 1-10. Lead article.

(2015) J. Brassett and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Security and the Performative Politics of Resilience: Critical Infrastructure Protection and Humanitarian Emergency Preparedness', Security Dialogue, 46(1) (February), pp. 32-50.

(2015) T. Lundborg and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'New Materialisms, Discourse Analysis, and International Relations: A Radical Intertextual Approach', Review of International Studies, 41(1) (January), pp. 3-25. Lead article.

(2013) V. Basham and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Gender, Race, and Border Security Practices: A Profane Reading of 'Muscular Liberalism'', British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 15(4) (November), pp. 509-527.

(2012) C. Minca and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Carl Schmitt and the Concept of the Border', Geopolitics, 17(4) (November), pp. 756-772.

(2012) J. Brassett and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Crisis Is Governance: Sub-Prime, the Traumatic Event, and Bare Life', Global Society, 26(1) (January), pp. 19-42. Lead article.

(2011) T. Lundborg and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Resilience, Critical Infrastructure, and Molecular Security: The Excess of "Life" in Biopolitics', International Political Sociology, 5(4) (December), pp. 367-383.

(2010) N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘The UK Border Security Continuum: Virtual Biopolitics and the Simulation of the Sovereign Ban’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28 (November), pp. 1071-1083.

(2009) N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘The Generalised Biopolitical Border? Re-conceptualising the Limits of Sovereign Power’, Review of International Studies, 35(4), (October), pp. 729-749. Lead article.

(2008) N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘Borders, Territory, Law’, International Political Sociology 4(2) (December), pp. 322-338.

(2008) N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘Borderwork Beyond Inside/Outside? Frontex, the Citizen-Detective and the War on Terror’, Space and Polity, 12(1), (April), pp. 63-79.

(2007) N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes: New Border Politics?’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 32(2), (April-June), pp. 177-195.

(2007) N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘Beyond a Cosmopolitan Ideal: the Politics of Singularity’, International Politics, 44(1) (January), pp. 107-124.

(2006) N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘Towards a Problematisation of the Problematisations that Reduce Northern Ireland to a Problem’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 9(4) (December), pp. 513-526.

(2005) N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘International Relations and the ‘Problem of History’’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 34(1), (August), pp. 115-136.

(2005) N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Protesting Against Citizenship’, Citizenship Studies, 9(2), (May), pp. 167-179.

Book chapters and other peer-reviewed academic publications

(Forthcoming) N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘Security’, in T. Wilson (Ed) Border Studies: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar).

(Forthcoming) T. Tyerman and N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘”Crisis” in the Channel? Practices of Securitization and Epistemic Borderwork in the British/European Borderlands’, in T. Wilson and J. C. Scott (Eds) Handbook of European Borderlands (London and New York: Routledge).

(2020) N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Re-Thinking Borders, Sovereignty, and Law: Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben and the "Nomos" of Contemporary Political Life', (重新思考疆界、主權與法：施密特、阿岡本及當代政治生活的「法」) trans. Chan, Ya-Hsun, in Lin Shu-Fen (Ed) Border, Sovereignty, Law (疆界，主權，法). Hsinchu: National Chiao Tung University Press.

(2017) G. Lofflmann and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Narrating Identity, Border Security, and Migration: Critical Focus Groups and the Everyday as Problematic', Critical Studies on Security, 5(2), pp. 207-211.

(2017) N. Vaughan-Williams, 'The Biopolitics of European Security', in S. Prozorov and S. Rentea (Eds) The Routledge Handbook of Biopolitics (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 225-234.

(2017) N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, and the "Nomos" of Contemporary Political Life', in S. Prozorov and S. Rentea (Eds) The Routledge Handbook of Biopolitics (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 140-153.

(2016) N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Borders', in A. Ní Mhurchú and R. Shindo (Eds) Critical Imaginations in International Relations (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 11-27.

(2014) J. C. H. Liu and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Introduction: Translating Borders, Deconstructing "Europe"-"East Asia"', in J.C.H. Liu and N. Vaughan-Williams (Eds) European-East Asian Borders in Translation (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 1-11.

(2013) J. Brassett, S. Croft, and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'An Agenda for Resilience Research in Politics and International Relations'. Introduction to Special Issue on 'Security and the Politics of Resilience', Politics 33(4) (December), pp. 221-228.

(2013) J. Brassett and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'The Politics of Resilience from a Practitioner's Perspective: An Interview with Helen Braithwaite OBE', Politics, 33(4) (December), pp. 229-239.

(2013) T. Lundborg and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'The Limits of International Relations: R.B.J. Walker's Inside/outside: International Relations as Political Theory', in C. Sylvest and P. Wilson (Eds) Classics of International Relations (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 208-217.

(2012) N. Parker and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Introduction' to Special Issue of 'Critical Border Studies: Broadening and Deepening the 'Lines in the Sand' Agenda', Geopolitics, 17(4) (November), pp. 727-733.

(2012) N. Vaughan-Williams, 'The Generalised Biopolitical Border? Re-Conceptualising the Limits of Sovereign Power', reprinted in C. Peoples and N. Vaughan-Williams (Eds) Major Works: Critical Security Studies, Volume IV (London and New York: Routledge).

(2011) N. Vaughan-Williams, 'European Border Security after the Arab Spring', EU-GRASP Working Paper 24 (December).

(2011) N. Vaughan-Williams, 'The Border’, in S. Legg (Ed) Geographies of the Nomos: Schmitt, Spatiality, and Sovereignty (London and New York: Routledge).

(2011) N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Politics Of/On the Line', part of a 'Critical Exchange' on R.B.J. Walker’s After the Globe, Before the World. With J. Bartelson, J. Brassett, C. Constantinou, S. Prozorov, A. Closs Stephens, T. Lundborg, and R.B.J. Walker. Contemporary Political Theory 10(2) (May), pp. 286-310.

(2011) N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Off-Shore Biopolitical Border Security: The EU's Global Response to Migration, Piracy, and 'Risky' Subjects', in L. Bialasiewicz (ed), EU Geopolitics and the Transformation of European Space, (Hampshire and Berlington, VT: Ashgate), pp. 185-200.

(2009) N. Parker and N. Vaughan-Williams et al, ‘Lines in the Sand? An Agenda for Critical Border Studies’, Geopolitics, 14(3), pp. 582-587.

(2009) N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘Portraits of War’, Review of International Studies 35(4), (October), pp. 874-875.

(2009) J. Edkins and N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘Introduction’ in Critical Theorists and International Relations (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 1-6.

(2009) N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘Giorgio Agamben’, in Critical Theorists and International Relations (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 19-30.

(2008) N. Vaughan-Williams, Review of J. Hodge, Derrida On Time, Kantian Review, 14(1), pp. 138-141.

(2008) A. Closs Stephens and N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘Introduction: London, Time, Terror’ in Terrorism and the Politics of Response (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 1-15.

Special issues of journals guest edited

(2013) J. Brassett, S. Croft, and N. Vaughan-Williams (Eds) 'Security and the Politics of Resilience', Politics, 33(4) (December). Eight papers, a practitioner interview, and a co-authored Introduction.

(2012) N. Parker and N. Vaughan-Williams (Eds) 'Critical Border Studies: Broadening and Deepening the 'Lines in the Sand' Agenda', Geopolitics, 17(4) (November). Eight papers and a co-authored Introduction.

(2012) J. Brassett and N. Vaughan-Williams (Eds) 'Governing Traumatic Events', Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 37(3) (August). Seven papers and a co-authored Introduction.

Reports and other non-academic publications

(2020) D. Stevens and N. Vaughan-Williams (2020) 'Was the UK public prepared for a pandemic? Fear and awareness before COVID-19'. British Policy and Politics at LSE, 14 April. 

(2017) G. Lofflmann and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'European citizens want more information on migration -- not tougher border security', The Conversation, 3 August. Available open access 

(2017) V. Squire, A. Dimitriadi, N. Perkowski, M. Pisani, D. Stevens, and N. Vaughan-Williams, 'Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by Boat: Mapping and Documenting Migratory Journeys and Experiences', Final Project Report.