Dr Russell Foster

Russell has a background in multiple disciplines. From 2003-2006 he read history at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, specialising in modern European political history and imperial history. From 2008-2010 he took MA degrees in international politics and human geography at Newcastle University. Russell’s PhD, funded by the ESRC, modelled the EU as a benevolent empire. During the PhD he was the first ESRC Visiting Scholar to the College of Liberal Arts, Virginia Tech, USA. His doctorate was awarded summa cum laude in 2013 and subsequently published as Mapping European Empire: Tabulae Imperii Europaie (London: Routledge 2015). From 2015-2016 Russell was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie International Fellow in the Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam, researching the relationship between the EU’s symbols and European identity. From 2016-2019 he was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Department of European and International Studies, King’s College London, researching the relationship between nationalism, European identity, and Brexit. He commenced as a lecturer in British and European Politics in May 2019.

Russell is currently researching cultural and fictional portrayals of Europe in pre- and post-Brexit British pop culture; the legacy of the Empire in contemporary British politics; and the changing relationship between identity and politics in the UK, the EU, and the world. In 2022 Russell was awarded the first Academic Staff Award as the highest-performing colleague in the Department of European and International Studies. In 2023 he was appointed Konrad Adenauer Stifting Visiting Fellow at the Centre for European Studies at Carleton University, Canada.

Research

• European and national identities
• Brexit, Euroscepticism, and Europhilia
• European integration and disintegration
• The EU and Brexit in culture
• The far right and new right
• Empire and imperialism
• Games and gameplay in education

Russell’s research is multidisciplinary, influenced by his background in history, international relations, human geography, political science, and European Studies. PhD and postdoctoral candidates are strongly welcomed.

Selected publications

• Russell Foster and Xander Kirke (2023) “‘Straighten Up and Fly Right’: Radical right attempts to appeal to the British LGBTQ+ community.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations (25:2), pp. 277-295.
• Russell Foster (2022) ‘Imperial Gothic 2.0: Brexit, Brex-Lit, and everyday Euroscepticism in British popular culture.’ Journal of Contemporary European Studies.
• Russell Foster (2022) ‘Symbolising Dis-Integration: Brexit and Affect in Mediatised Symbolism’, chapter in Stefan Gänzle, Jarle Trondal and Benjamin Leruth (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Differentiated Integration. London: Routledge.
• Hartmut Behr and Russell Foster (forthcoming 2024) Studying International Relations: A Companion Guide. Montreal: McGill-Queens' University Press.
• Russell Foster and Matthew Feldman (2021) ‘A Plague on Both Your Houses. Populism v. technocracy in the post-Brexit British New Right’, in Russell Foster, Monika Meislova, and Jan Grzymski (eds.) ‘Revisiting the legitimization of EUropean politics beyond populism and technocracy.’ Journal of Contemporary European Research (2021).
• Russell Foster and Oliver Daddow (2021) ‘The UK, the World, and Europe’, chapter in Bill Jones, Philip Norton, and Isabelle Hertner (eds.) Politics UK. London: Routledge.
• Matthew Johnson and Russell Foster (2020), ‘Which ideas should guide US Foreign Policy? Holding fundamentalist policy paradigms to account’. International Politics [accepted 14 January 2020]. 23pp.
• Russell Foster (2019) ‘Cry God for England, Harry and Saint George’. Europe and the limits of integrating identity’, in Russell Foster and Jan Grzymski (eds.) ‘The Limits of Europe’, Global Discourse (9:1), pp.26-47.
• Russell Foster (2018) ‘“These are they that Faustus most desires.” Identity, Iconography, and ‘Europe’ in the Crimea Crisis’, in Kenneth McDonagh (ed.) ‘The Next European Century? Europe in Global Politics in the Twenty-First Century’. Journal of Contemporary European Research (14:4), pp.310-323.
• Russell Foster, Nick Megoran and Matthew Dunn (2017), ‘Towards a Geopolitics of Atheism: Critical geopolitics post the War on Terror’. Political Geography 60, pp.179-189.

Teaching

Russell has experience teaching modules in politics, political theory, European studies, human geography, political sociology, and political history. He is available to supervise BA, MA, and PhD dissertations on themes linked to his research interests. Russell is module convener for:

• 7AAOM003 European Identities & the EU
• 6AAOB323 The Theory and Practice of Empire
• 6AAOB301 Britain and European Integration

Engagement

Russell is a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council of the United Kingdom; convener of the EIS research group Europe's Borderlands; and co-convener of the IHR Rethinking Modern Europe seminar series. He co-convenes the UACES network The Limits of EU-rope and is co-host of the KCL podcast series Breaking Britain. He regularly provides political analysis for international media such as BBC, Sky, CNN, MSNBC, Euronews, The Economist, Financial Times, CBC, France24.