Kathryn M. Fisher's research is located primarily around intersections of security, identity, and insecurity, with existing publications including her book Security, Identity, and British Counterterrorism Policy (2015), and article (with Christopher McIntosh, 2021) "Failing isn’t an Option, It’s the Only Option: Critical Politics as a Time of Contradiction and Failure". Work in preparation includes an article on 21st century American wartime in the context of professional military education, and book on the politics of food, security, and (non)belonging.

This latter work explores how spatial and temporal configurations of identity, and assumptions of distance and difference as danger and otherness, play a causally constitutive role in convergences of security and identity. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science, MA in International Affairs from American University, and BA in Geography and French from the University of Colorado.

Kathryn is currently pursuing a Diploma in Plant-Based Culinary Arts at Le Cordon Bleu in London, has held teaching posts at National Defense University, Ohio University, and the London School of Economics and Political Science, and is an Executive Board Member for the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Armed Forces and Conflict Resolution.

Qualification

• PhD International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science
• Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education (Associate), London School of Economics and Political Science

 

Research Interests

• Identity
• Security/insecurity
• War studies
• Temporality
• Food
• Relational/interpretive research methodologies
• Discourse

Broadly speaking, Kathryn’s research investigates the ways in which patterns of us/them boundary drawing constrain or enable security, identity, and pathways of possibility in particular ways in particular contexts. She has previously anchored such relational sociological studies in empirical analyses of counterterrorism, with current research energy focused on two primary arenas: The first being identity and security in the context of food and beverage production, representation, and consumption; and the second being work on temporality and war, in particular how wartime plays out and is of consequence in the context of professional military education.

 

Publications

Book

Fisher, KM. Security, Identity, and British Counterterrorism Policy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 1-270.

 

Book chapters

• “The Americas – (dis)Ordering, Security, and International Politics”, in A Changing International Order? Implications for the Security Environment, edited by William G. Braun, lll, Stéfanie von Hlatky and Kim Richard Nossal (Queen’s University, Centre for International and Defence Policy, Strategic Studies Institute), p. 65-78.
• H-Diplo Roundtable on Teaching Gender in IR; “Essay by: Kathryn Fisher, National Defense University”, edited by Andrew Szarejko (H-Diplo, May 2020).
• Introduction “We Have the Watch”, with Thomas Hughes, Christian Leuprecht, and Joel J. Sokolsky, in North American Strategic Defense in the 21st Century Security and Sovereignty in an Uncertain World (Springer, May 2018), p. 1-14.
• Fisher, KM. “Disrupting the “conditional selfhood” of threat construction”, in A Space for Time: Essays on Time, Temporality and Global Politics, edited by Andrew Hom, Christopher McIntosh, Alasdair McKay and Liam Stockdale, E-International Relations Publishing, Bristol 2016 (June 2016), p. 150-175.
• Fisher, KM. “Spatial and temporal imaginaries in the securitization of terrorism” (In Critical Perspectives on Counter-Terrorism, edited by Lee Jarvis and Michael Lister, Routledge, 2015), p. 56-76.

 

Research articles

• Fisher, KM and C. McIntosh. “Failing isn’t an Option, It’s the Only Option: Critical Politics as a Time of Contradiction and Failure” (August 2021, International Studies Review)
• Fisher, KM. “Exploring the temporality in/of British counterterrorism law and lawmaking” (5 April 2013, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Volume 6, No. 1) p. 50-72.

 

Policy papers

• Fisher, KM. “Political Violence and Terrorism against Major International Sporting Events: A Chronology and Consideration of Mitigation Strategies” (Commissioned by the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS), Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV), January 2013) p. 1-52.

 

Teaching

2014-2021 – National Defense University

• Introduction to Security Studies
• Strategic Thought
• Terrorism, Security, and (in)Security: The B-Sides (all postgraduate)
• Dozens of dissertation advisees

2013-2014 – Ohio University

• Engaging Politics
• Themes in Global Politics (undergraduate)
• Terrorism (graduate)

2012-2013 – London School of Economics and Political Science

• LSE 100, Thinking Like a Social Scientist (undergraduate)

 

Groups/memberships

• British International Studies Association
• European International Studies Association
• International Studies Association
• International Sociological Association (Executive Board Member, Research Committee RC01 Armed Forces and Conflict Resolution)