Iris joined King’s Russia Institute in October 2023 for her MPhil/PhD in Russian and Eurasian Studies. She has already contributed to research projects at Columbia University, King’s College London, and the London School of Economics where she examined topics in the fields of global health, geopolitics, international relations theory and oral medical history.

Iris holds a BA in History and International Relations from King’s College London and an MSc in International Relations from the LSE. 

Research interests

• Vaccine diplomacy
• Russian and Chinese soft power
• Authoritarianism
• Global health governance
• International relations

Doctoral research

'Doctors with Borders’: vaccine diplomacy as a foreign policy tool of soft power for revisionist states

The COVID-19 pandemic brought to the forefront of the global competition public health and its conflicting statist and globalist approaches. This competition also had a geopolitical edge with revisionist states using vaccines as a tool to promote their vision of the global order. This competitive international context was exploited by countries such as Russia and China and undermined the globalist approach of international actors such as the World Health Organisation (WHO). However, the instrumentalisation of medical diplomacy by revisionist states is not a new phenomenon. Similar dynamics took place throughout history, particularly during the Cold War.

This research analyses vaccine exports and narratives used by the exporters and recipients. To do so, it uses the case study of Russia's and China's vaccine diplomacies in Central Asia during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also embeds these dynamics into the history of medical diplomacy, using examples such as the Soviet polio vaccine and Chinese medical teams.

PhD supervisors

Professor Gulnaz Sharafutdinova and Dr Thomas White.

Research projects

Iris is a research assistant on the Politics of Grievance and Democratic Governance (PLEDGE) project, supported by a Horizon Europe grant (EU & UKRI).

During her first two years of PhD, Iris was involved in research projects at Columbia University, as part of The Pandemic Program: Writing the History of the Pandemic, and at the London Metropolitan University, as part of the International Biological Security Education Network. More recently, she took part in the King’s Parliamentary Research Internship and worked as a parliamentary researcher at the House of Lords.

Publications

• Magne, I. (2025) ‘COVID-19 Vaccines, a ‘New Currency in Soft Power?’ A Comparative Study of Soviet and Russian Vaccine Diplomacies’ [Manuscript in preparation]
• Benque, L. and Magne, I. (2025) ‘Leadership and Covid-19: The Case Study of Tunisia’. [Manuscript in preparation]
• Benque, L., Magne, I. and Newman, I. (2025) ‘The Anti-vax Sentiment During the Polio Vaccination Campaign 1955-1965’. [Manuscript in preparation]
• Magne, I. Ibbotson, O., Shang, L. and Dando, M. (2025) Toward a Collaborative, Collective, and Integrative International Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Security Education. Applied Biosafety, doi: https://doi.org/10.1089/apb.2024.0048.
• Magne, I., Ibbotson, O., Shang, L. and Dando, M. (2024). Lessons for biosecurity education from the International Nuclear Security Education Network. Journal of Biosafety and Biosecurity, 6(4), pp.252–257. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jobb.2024.09.002.
• Magne, I. ‘To Confuse or to Persuade: What is the Purpose of the Kremlin’s Disinformation?’ and ‘Pushed by the Past or Pulled by the Future: What Drives the Russian People?’ in (eds.) Friedman, O., Michlin-Shapir, V. (2024) Deciphering Russian Enigma: In 15 Questions and 30 Answers. Palgrave Macmillan.