Doctoral research programme

Our doctoral community

The research culture in CSD is enlivened by an active postgraduate (PhD and MA) community and a visiting scholars programme that hosts academics, postgraduates and practitioners from around the world.

CSD supports an active and vibrant postgraduate research community and welcomes applications for doctoral study that enhance our research themes, in politics and international relations, and related fields in the social sciences:

• contemporary democratic theory and practice
• critical International relations theory and practice
• energy security, energy transitions, political economy of resources
• governance, public policy, neoliberalism, complexity, anthropocene
• politics of identity, gender, misogyny, race, sexuality, technology
• postcolonial politics, nationalism, small states, Asian geopolitics
• states, security, development, rights, diplomacy, violence

Once you have established that your proposed PhD project falls broadly within our areas of supervision then we encourage you to submit an application so that we can provide a detailed assessment. Further information about PhD research at Centre for the Study of Democracy, including areas of research and supervision, can be found in our FAQ document. 

If you require further clarification prior to applying, please email
[email protected].

View further details on the application process

We also contribute to a number of Masters programmes based in the School of Social Sciences.

Completed doctoral projects at CSD

The following are examples of recently completed doctoral projects:

• Donald Aasen – Constructing narcoterrorism as danger: the politics of security and representation
• Filiz Akgul – Patriarchal theory reconsidered: torture and gender-based violence in Turkey
• Waleed Al Baker – Towards an eGovernment: the Case of the Emirate of Dubai
• Pol Bargues Pedreny – Framing and practice of contemporary peacebuilding
• Juweria Ali – Somali Resistance against Ethiopian State Nationalism: A Discursive Inquiry  
• Khawla Bint Hamad Bin Saif Al-Thani - Positive tribal diplomacy and the emergence of new states : a critical study of the diplomacy adopted by three Arabian Gulf tribes (1716–1826)
• Anas Altikriti – Institutionalising Islam in Britain Post-9/11 – Mapping Subjectivities
• Hans Asenbaum – Subject to Change: Democracy, Disidentification, and the Digital
• Juweira Ali – Somali Resistance against Ethiopian State Nationalism: A Discursive Enquiry
• Dawood Azami – The Politics of Drugs and Conflict: The Challenges of Insurgency and State-(Un)Building
• Maria Bastos – Foreign Policy of Pakistan: A Critical Approach
• Ana E. Carballo – Empowering development: Capabilities, liberation and community in Latin American traditions
• Eyup Carmikl – Caught Between Islam and the West: Secularism in the Kemalist Discourse
• Mae Chokr – Tribes, Politics and Memory in Iraq 
• Youssef Chokri - What explains the resilience of the Moroccan monarchy in the Arab world and with what means did it withstand the Arab Revolt of 2010? 
• Emmeline Cooper – Pension Schemes, Sustainable Investing and the Promise and Challenge of Governance Innovations
• Robert Cowley – Eco-Cities: technological showcases or public spaces?
• Baraneh Emadian – The plight of political subjectivity: Two moments of political subjectivation in contemporary Iran
• Jalal Faiz – Education, conflict and conflict resolution in Balochistan, Pakistan
• Gholamhossein Firouzfar – Central-regional budget allocation process in Iran: a critical analysis
• Eduarda Fontes – Politics of Education and National Identity in the Age of Bolsonarismo in Brazil 
• Martin Fortis – Beyond expertise and deliberation: toward an agonistic policy analysis
• Giuma Gamaty – Management of the brain drain and its relationship with democratization and human development in Libya
• Danila Genovese – The Tragedy of Islamism in Britain: a fetishism for politics
• Jan-Joris Gerhards – One Planet Living and the legitimacy of sustainability governance: From standardised information to regenerative systems
• Javier Gomez-Arribas – The Negation of Conflict in Contemporary International Thought. An Agonistic Critique
• Elizabeth Greenhalgh – Social media, cultural relations and the British Council
• Aminullah Habibi – Islam and democracy: prospects and possibilities
• Khawla Hamad Al-Thani – Positive Tribal Diplomacy and the Emergence of New States: a critical study of the diplomacy adopted by three Arabian Gulf Tribes (1716-1826)
• Adli Hawwari – Challenging the Incompatibility Paradigm: A Democratic Audit of Jordan, 1990-2010
• James Heartfield – The Dynamics of European Integration
• Gemma Jamieson Malik – How a radical participatory practice came to fit within the dominant hegemony: the case of participatory budgeting
• Emmanuel Jouai – Producing Ambiguous Threats: The Xenos and Xenophobia in Postcolonial France
• Syed Kamran Bokhari – Moderations Among Salafists and Jihadists
• Mebratu Kelecha – Protests, Development and Democratization in Ethiopia, 2014-2020
• Sebastian Kevany – Advancing Health and non-Health Security, Diplomacy and International Relations through the Enlightened Design and Delivery of Smart Global Health Programs
• Gulawar Khan – Nationalism, federalism and separatism in Balochistan, Pakistan
• Martin King – Deliberation and Decision Making Online: Evaluating Platform Design
• Ashley Kitchen – The Workings of the ‘Elected Dictatorship’: Evaluating the Substantive Representation of Women and Legislation on Violence against Women in England and Wales
• Natalia Koga – Shifts in the Relation between the State and Civil Society in Brazil's Recent Democracy
• Abdul Koroma – Non-state violence, social capital and state building
• Claudio Lanza – Rivalry in International Relations: A Mimetic Approach to the Case of The Rivalry in Northern Ireland (1963-2020)
• Seokbae Lee – Construction of China and India's national interests: the Tibet question
• Amanda Machin – Language Games and the Subject of Lack; Wittgenstein, Lacan and the Nation
• Daniel Matteo – The use of Private Military and Security Companies in International Society: Contestation and Legitimation of State Practice
• Annapurna Menon – Coloniality of a Postcolonial Nation-State: India in Indian Administered Jammu & Kashmir
• Moustafa Menshawy – The role of the state in re/constructing the 1973 war discourse in Egypt
• Keste Miller – Paradigms in Caribbean Trade Diplomacy: Negotiating the Cariforum - EC Free Trade Agreement
• Thomas Mills – Coordination and complexity: politics and markets in the National Health Service
• Suhair Mohammed – Islamists and democracy in Sudan: The role of Hasan Turabi 1989-2001
• Daryoush Mohammad Poor – The metamorphosis of authority: a case study of the Aga Khan development network and the Ismaili Imamate
• Harry Mongini – Foucault, Resistance, and Parrhesia
• Richard Neve – The Limits of Contestation
• Nevena Nancheva – Transforming Identities in Europe: Bulgarian and Macedonia between Nationalism and Europeanization
• Kwaku Ofosu-Asare – Trade Liberalisation, Globalisation and the Cocoa Industry in Ghana: the Case of the Smallholder Farmers
• Pierre Parrouffe – The impasse of liberal (in)equality: materialising egalitarian politics through collective fidelity
• Christian Pfenninger – Anarchism and sovereignty in international relations
• Sara Raimondi – Beyond the political? evaluating new materialist accounts of politics
• Mantasha Rashid – Violence against Women in Kashmir: Personal and Political
• Elisa Randazzo – Changing narratives? Conceptualisations of post-conflicts peace-building
• Charlotte Regan – Post-9/11 US Civil-Military Relations and Control of Military Strategy During Operation Iraqi Freedom
• Suhair Salah Mohammed – Islamists and Democracy in Sudan: The Role of Hasan Turabi 1989 – 2001
• Mohammad Samiei – Neo-Orientalism? A Critical Appraisal of Changing Western Perspectives: Bernard Lewis, John Esposito and Gilles Kepel
• Paula Sandrin – Is Turkey’s security identity and strategy incompatible with the EU’s Common Foreign & Security Policy?
• Jessica Schmidt – Democracy promotion in a post-political world
• Thorraya Soghayroun – Sudanese Literature in English Translation: An Analytical Study of the Translation with a Historical Introduction to the Literature    
• Peter Speiser - The British Army of the Rhine and the Germans (1948–1957): from enemies to partners?
• Julia Svetlichnaja – Artistic practices & democratic politics: towards the markers of uncertainty: from counter-hegemonic positions to plural hegemonies
• Promod Tandan – A postcolonial approach to Nepal's geopolitics, hydro-politics, and border-politics
• Michela Telatin – The development-security nexus and security sector reform
• Carlos Timo Brito – Foreign influences in domestic policy-making: policy transfer and federal-led community policing in Brazil
• Daniel Tomozeiu – Diplomatic Negotiations: Romania's Accession to the European Union, a Case Study
• Marta Welander – The Politics of Exhaustion and Migrant Subjectivities: Researching border struggles in northern France in 2016-2019
• Rabea Willers – An Empty Promise? Digital Democracy in the Smart City