Luke completed his BA in Politics and International Relations at the University of Exeter including a year of studying abroad at LMU (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) as part of Erasmus. He then completed his MA in Political Science with a Concentration in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought (CSPT) in Canada at the University of Victoria. Since then, Luke has been the recipient of a 1+3 studentship from LISS DTP and has since then completed his MRes at Queen Mary University of London and is currently undertaking his doctoral research therein.

During his course of study Luke has acted as a teaching associate since his time at the University of Victoria, having taught on the following modules Introduction to Political Theory (POLI 202), Politics and Religion (POLI 382), The Worlds of Politics (POLI 103) and European Integration (POLI 233). During his time at QMUL Luke has also been fortunate to teach modules relating International Relations Theory (POL 251), Modern Political Thought (POL 263), Introduction to International Relations (POL 106), and Thinking Politically (POL 110).

Since pursing his doctoral research Luke has been the co-founder of, and is the acting chair of, Global Theory Forum, a London based ECR research Group focusing on supporting researchers within the discipline of Political Theory whose research engages with clear global dimensions. Luke has also acted as the book reviews editor for Millennium: Journal of International Studies (volume 52).

Office hours

Monday: 13.00 - 14.00

Research interests

• Linguistic performativity
• Deconstruction
• Dramaturgy
• Post-structuralism
• Body politics
• Radical democracy
• Discourse analysis/theory
• Aesthetics

Teaching

4SSPP104 Introduction to Political Theory

PhD research

Luke Lavender is a ESRC funded PhD researcher co-supervised by Dr. Lasse Thomassen and Dr. Joe Hoover. His work focuses on how we understand an aporia within democratic accounts of political participation and activism: how do we make sense of actors who engage, participate, or demonstrate politically by performing silence? In engaging with this question, Lukes’ work sits within the research area of ‘Silence Studies’, an area of study which engages with the topic of how silence can be a productive site of political activity or interaction rather that a phenomenon that only indicates the presence of repression, inhibition, or agentic smothering. In this space, Luke engages with two broad concerns. First, how a productive understanding of silence changes our understanding of our own agency in political interaction and, second, how this challenges our understanding of the social context within which political interaction occurs. To point one, Luke engages with how silence relates to our understanding of agency through the use performative speech act theory. To point two, Luke’s research shows how a productive approach to silence as a performative act highlights the dramaturgical character of political interaction, and, more specifically, the way in which actors are choreographed in contexts when silence is enacted or mobilised. These insights are then developed to analyse the concerted efforts of peace activists to integrate silence into their protest repertoire in the first wave of CND activism and thereby show what silence does, has done, or can do for the cause of peace politics.

Latest publications

Lavender, L., Freeden, M., & Brito Vieira, M. (2025). Embedding Silence into Politics: Book Roundtable Discussion. Theoria, 72(184), 63-87