Demystifying Academic Writing: A WIWIP and New Voices Roundtable

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Chair: Dr Amanda Chisholm, Senior Lecturer in Security Studies / Researcher in Gender and Security

What is the difference between writing a blog and writing an academic article? How do we approach translating specialist knowledge for a generalist audience? What is the practical connection between researching and writing? How do we overcome writer’s block? How do we face the challenges of writing in our non-native language(s)?

This co-sponsored roundtable begins to address these important questions. It seeks to demystify the writing process by drawing upon a diverse expertise and experiences of women academics and communications experts to explore different methods and practices around writing as an academic and translating research for heterodox audiences.

Roundtable panellists

Dr Aggie Hirst is Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory and Methods in the Department of War Studies at King's College London. Her research is situated in the fields of international political theory and critical military studies. She is Principal Investigator on a Leverhulme Trust and British Academy funded research project exploring the US military’s use of wargames and simulations for teaching/training purposes. She is currently completing her second book, The Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military (contracted with Oxford University Press), which explores of the phenomena of play and immersion, arguing that the ‘flow state’ generated by gaming is being used to instil doctrine and cultivate mental and physical muscle memory in service members. She has recently published articles with Review of International Studies (2019), Critical Military Studies (2020), and International Political Sociology (2021) and International Studies Quarterly (forthcoming 2022) on play, videogames, and the wargames renaissance, and she is a lead co-author of new IR Theory Textbook with Oxford University Press (forthcoming 2022).

Lizzie Ellen is the Communications Manager for the School of Security Studies, King's College London. In this role she manages public engagement and communications activities including social media, media and PR, the website, events, podcast and videos across the School, War Studies and Defence Studies Departments. Prior to this, she held Communications Officer roles in the Policy Institute, King's College London, and at the University of Sheffield. Before working in Higher Education, Lizzie worked for Paul Blomfield MP.

Dr Kiran Phull is a Lecturer in International Relations at the Department of War Studies. Her research focuses on the politics of global knowledge production and the rise of data-driven practices like opinion polling, which shape how we understand and order the world. Having worked in both industry and academia, she has experience writing for different audiences and navigating the rhetoric of expertise.

Laura Zuber is a Hungarian-born doctoral researcher from Germany at the War Studies Department at King's College London. She is investigating into decoloniality in the context of perceiving and responding to crises in relation to the global crisis of social reproduction. Her research interests are global political economy, decoloniality, feminist theory, and crisis management. Laura’s path to her research topic has led through a BA in Media and Communications at the University of Passau, Germany, and a double-master degree in MA European Studies at the University of Passau and MA English Studies, Intercultural and Multilingual Communication at the University of Málaga, Spain. She has previous experience among others in intercultural project management and public relations.

Dr Catherine Baker is Reader in 20th Century History at the University of Hull and has written or edited six academic books, most recently Race and the Yugoslav Region: Postsocialist, Post-Conflict, Postcolonial? (Manchester University Press) and the edited volume Making War on Bodies: Militarisation, Aesthetics and Embodiment in International Politics (Edinburgh University Press). She often reviews proposals and typescripts for a number of UK, US and Canadian publishers, sits on three journals' editorial boards, and is a frequent peer-reviewer for a wide range of journals, including Critical Military Studies, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Millennium and more.

Dr Susan B. Martin is a Senior Lecturer in the War Studies Department at King’s College London. In her work she uses IR theory, particularly structural realism, to analyse state policies on CBN weapons, deterrence and other types of coercive diplomacy, and economic competition among states. Her work includes the articles ‘The Future of Chemical Weapons: Implications from the Syrian Civil War’ (with Geoffrey Chapman and Hassan Elbahtimy), ‘Norms, Military Utility, and the Use/Non-use of Weapons: The Case of Anti-plant and Irritant Agents in the Vietnam War,’ ‘The Role of Biological Weapons in International Politics: The Real Military Revolution’ and the edited book Terrorism, War or Disease? Unravelling the Use of Biological Weapons (with Anne Clunan and Peter Lavoy). While continuing to work on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, she is also completing a book manuscript, Taboos or Consequences: The Role of Normative and Instrumental Factors in US Decision-making on the Use and Non-use of Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Weapons in the Vietnam War.

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