Charles Gray

Profile

I graduated from the University of Leeds with a MA (hons) in International Relations in 2019, graduating from the University of Kent with a BA (hons) in Politics and International Relations prior to that in 2018. My current ESRC (WRDTP) funded PhD examines the disciplinary impact of the Research-Excellence-Framework (REF) upon IR within Britain, alongside exploring Twitter as a location of academic disciplining. I was awarded the Colin Seymour Ure prize for best undergraduate dissertation at the University of Kent, and at the University of Leeds won an award for best MA dissertation. Both  dissertations focused primarily on the discipline as a subject itself, with my undergraduate dissertation focusing on institutional pressures placed upon scholars in the US following the ‘behavioural revolution’, and my postgraduate dissertation focusing on how the ‘emotional turn’ within IR could provide scholars with a way of analysing Russian foreign policy without committing to common orientalist tropes. My interest in the way in which academic disciplines are disciplined largely stems from my time as an exchange student at The State University of New York at Buffalo in 2016.

Research interests

My main research interests related to my doctoral thesis are:

• Sociology of Knowledge Production
• The History of Epistemic Communities within IR
• The ‘Neoliberal’ University
• The ‘Campification’ of IR

Alongside this, I am particularly interested in:

• Post-Soviet Russian Foreign Policy
• ‘Great Power Politics’
• The Rise of China
• The Theoretical Approaches of Paul Virllio

Qualifications

• MA International Relations
• BA Politics and International Relations

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Global Security Challenges