You are here: / / Dr Kandida Purnell
A person is wearing glasses.

Dr Kandida Purnell

Associate Professor of Interest Relations

Contact:
Email: purnelk@richmond.ac.uk
School: School of Communications, Arts & Social Sciences
Research centres: International Visual Arts and Cultures (IVAC) / The State, Power and Globalisation (SPG)

About
Kandida Purnell is an Associate Professor at Richmond American University London. Kandida has over a decade’s experience teaching in the English, Scottish, and US systems while her interdisciplinary research into the local-global politics of bodies takes a methodologically innovative, feminist, and de-colonial approach and draws and builds on contemporary international social and political theory using mixed/innovative methods.

Kandida has written on the body politics of the Global War on Terror, resistance practices, mass casualty events, repatriation and commemoration processes, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kandida’s monograph ‘Rethinking the Body in Global Politics’ was published by Routledge in 2021. In 2023 ‘When This is Over: Reflections on an Unequal Pandemic’ (co-edited with Professor Jenny Edkins, Professor Lucy Easthope, and Dr Amy Cortvriend) and ‘Land of the Brave: Gender, Race, and Class and the Cultural Politics of Militarisation’ (co-authored with Dr Natasha Danilova and Emma Dolan) will be published by Bristol University Press – Policy Press and Edinburgh University Press – Advances in Critical Military Studies.

  • Fellow, UK Higher Education Academy (2022)
  • Associate Fellow, UK Higher Education Academy (2014)
  • PhD International Relations (University of Aberdeen, 2017)
  • MA International Relations (Kings College London, 2009)
  • BA Politics with International Studies (University of Surrey, 2005)

Some of the courses I teach:

  • IR7100: Research Methods
  • IR7450: Conflict and Post-Conflict Studies
  • INR4100: Introduction to International Relations
  • PLT3103: Comparative Political Systems
  • DEV5200: Research Methods and Practices
  • CRM5400: Terrorism and Counterterrorism
  • IR6296/8: Senior Seminar I and II (International Relations)
  • PL6296/8: Senior Seminar I and II (Political Science)
  • INR7303: Securities and Insecurities: Bodies, Identity, Images
  • INR6400: Peace and Conflict Studies
  • With Edkins, Jenny, Easthope, Lucy, and Cortvriend, Amy. 2023. ‘When This Is Over: Reflections on an Unequal Pandemic’. Bristol University Press, Policy Press.
  • Purnell, Kandida. 2021. Bodies Coming Apart and Bodies Becoming Parts: Widening, Deepening, and Em-bodying Ontological (In)Security in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Global Studies Quarterly, Volume 1, Issue 4, December 2021, ksab037, https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksab037
  • Purnell, Kandida. 2021. ‘Rethinking the Body in Global Politics: Bodies, Body Politics, and The Body Politic in a Time of Pandemic’, London and New York: Routledge.
  • Purnell, Kandida. 2021. ‘Out of Touch, Out of Tune: The Social-Political Construction of Atmospheric Walls during the COVID-19 Pandemic’s First Wave’, Emotions and Society, Vol. 3(2): 277-293, DOI: 10.1332/263169021X16171227433111
  • With Danilova, Natasha. 2020, ‘The ‘museumification’ of the Scottish soldier and the meaning-making of Britain’s wars’, Critical Military Studies. Vol. 6(3-4): 287-305.
  • Purnell, Kandida. 2018, ‘Grieving, Valuing and Viewing Differently: The Global War on Terror’s American Toll’, International Political Sociology, Vol. 12(2): 156-171.
  • With Danilova, Natasha. 2018, ‘Dancing at the Frontline: Rosie Kay’s 5SOLDIERS De-Realises and Re-Secures the Global War on Terror’, Critical Studies on Security, Vol. 6(3): 370-375.
  • Purnell, Kandida. 2015, ‘Body Politics and Boundary Work Nobodies on Hunger Strike at Guantánamo (2013–2015)’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol.39 (4): 271-286.
  • ‘Telling a Feminist IR Story’, Roundtable organized by Professor Marysia Zalewski (Cardiff University), ISA Annual Conference, Nashville USA, 2022.
  • ‘Micro Actors & Practices’, Panel organized by Professor Renee Marlin-Bennett (Johns Hopkins University), ISA Annual Conference, Nashville USA, 2022.
  • COVID-19 and the Politics of Trauma, Workshop organized by Dr Henrique Furtardo (University of the West of England) and Jessica Auchter (University of Chattanooga, Tennessee), January 2021.
  • ‘Out of Touch, Out of Tune: The Social-Political Construction of Atmospheric Walls during the COVID-19 Pandemic’s First Wave’, International Feminist Journal of Politics Annual Conference. Online, Feb 2021.
  • “Curating Conflict: Political Violence in Museums, Memorials, and Exhibitions”, Webinar organised by BISA/ Reeves, A and Heath-Kelly, C, BISA Online, October 2020
    Critical Methods and Methodologies for International Relations’, Webinar organised by the BISA/Poststructuralist Politics Working Group featuring Shannon Brincat; David Duriesmith; Kandida Purnell, Tim Aistrope, BISA Online, August 2020.
  • “Researching Army@Fringe through affective engagements: a case-study of InValid Voices (Dir. Helen-Marie O’Malley)”, Panel on Critical Methods and Methodologies for IR organised by Duriesmith, D, BISA Annual Conference, Newcastle, UK, June 2020.
  • “Army/Artist Engagement and the Performance of War in Public: Army@Fringe and the Familiar/Familial Embodiment of the Military, BISA Annual Conference, London, June 2019.
  • ‘Army@Fringe and the Performance of War in Public’, EISA Annual Conference, Prague, Sept 2018;
  • ‘Global Security: Noticing, under-noticing, un-noticed’, 2016 BISA Annual Conference, Edinburgh, June 2016;
  • ‘American bodies, American boundaries: Visibility, invisibility and dead American soldier-bodies’, EISA Annual Conference, Giardini – Naxos, Sicily, Sept 2015;
  • ‘Dead soldier-bodies and/in international relations’, ISA Annual Conference, New Orleans, LA, US, Feb 2015;
  • ‘Dead Bodies and Boundary Work: An Investigation into the American Politics of Dead Soldier-Bodies’, Junior Scholar Symposium, ISA Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, March 2014;
  • ‘Inhumane tendencies and the politics of life and death itself: What can bodies do?’ EWIS, Gediz University, Izmir, Turkey, May 2014.
  • ‘Diffusing, confusing or transfusing gender? The paradoxical politics and practices of the international diffusion (or otherwise) of gender’, ISA Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA, US, April 2013.
  • ‘Violated boundaries and bodies that move: The hungry bodies of Bahía de Guantánamo’, On violence, Re-Thinking Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zadar, Croatia, Sept 2013;
  • ‘Body/Border’, ISA North East Conference, Baltimore, US, Nov 2012;
  • ‘Bare life and the possibility to resist’, ‘Politics and Knowledge’, Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, University of Nottingham, UK, Jan 2010.
  • ‘The Quality of Life, Death, and Commemoration in a time of Covid-19’, Connecting in a Time of COVID-19, Workshop organised by Dr Mark Honigsbaum, City, University of London, 10/03/2022.
  • ‘The Visual and Emotional Politics of the COVID-19 Pandemic’, Post-Pandemic Worlds Guest Lecture, Richmond, The American International University in London, 01/10/2021.
  • ‘The Politics of Commemoration: After COVID-19: A Roundtable’ House of Lords, Spring 2023.
  • ‘In Conversation: Dead Body Politics (in a time of Pandemic) with Dr Kandida Purnell’, Centre For Death and Society, University of Bath. 2022 (date tbc).
  • ‘Gender and International Politics: Taster Talk’, Richmond, The American International University in London, 8th May 2021 (Offer Holders Day).
  • ‘Rethinking the Body in Global Politics’, Symbolic Objects in Contentious Politics BISA event, University of Aberdeen: Invited Speaker;
  • ‘Terrorism in the UK’, European Law Students’ Association (ELSA) UK, King’s College, University of Aberdeen, Oct 2017: Invited Panelist;
  • ‘The Scottish Warrior’, Festival of Social Science, Gordon Highlanders’ Museum, Nov 2017: Chair;
  • ‘Bodies, Body Politics, Bodies Politics’, Talk for University of Aberdeen’s Politics and International Relations Society (PIRSOC), Sept 2018, Invited Speaker.
  • Guest Blogger, Duck of Minerva (2016-2017): Recent Blog posts: