Marine Guéguin

Profile

I completed a Licence de Droit at the Université de Rennes 1 in 2015, including a year abroad from 2014-2015 at Cardiff University as an Erasmus student. I completed a LLM International Law at the University of Southampton in 2016 and a MA Security, Terrorism and Insurgency at the University of Leeds in 2018.

I am currently a Postgraduate Researcher (PhD) in Politics and International Studies with a focus on French counterterrorism strategy under the supervision of Pr Edward Newman and Dr Gordon Clubb. 

I am currently a seminar leader for the modules ‘International Politics’ and ‘Security Studies’ at the School of Politics and International Studies and taught ‘Understanding and Researching Contemporary Society’ at the School of Sociology and Social Policy – University of Leeds.

I am POLIS PGR Rep. 

I am the podcast host for ‘Insecure: A Security Podcast’ with Dr Harrisson Swinhoe, funded by the Centre for Global Security Challenges. https://rss.com/podcasts/insecureasecuritypodcast/ 

Research interests

Doctoral thesis 

I am a fourth-year postgraduate researchers at the School of Politics and International Studies at University of Leeds (UK) under the supervision of Professor Edward Newman and Dr Gordon Clubb.

My doctoral thesis seeks to provide an in-depth study of the French counterterrorism strategy through critical discourse analysis of French political discourse to understand and examine the activation of emergency and extraordinary powers in the aftermath of Paris attacks (V13, November 2015). The study entails an analysis of political discourse from January 2015, November 2015 to October 2017, retrospectively corresponding to Charlie Hebdo attacks, to Paris attacks which led to the activation of extraordinary powers, its reactivations, and the new legislation of the SILT bill in 2017 institutionalising the extraordinary powers into ordinary law. The aim of this empirical research on France and its response to terrorism is to provide an in-depth examination of the depiction of the threat of terrorism in political discourse resting upon a revised securitisation approach. It aims at looking at the delineation of the terrorist other from a decolonial and orientalist critical lenses, the securitising language used to justify counterterrorism policies, the delineation of the threat of terrorism and the selling of counterterrorism policies. The empirical analysis on the French response to terrorism contributes to the literature by offering a new angle in counterterrorism research in examining the forever extension of extraordinary powers enshrined into ordinary law, making the exceptional threat and powers become permanent and normalised – as a colonial continuum and legacy. Those counterterrorism powers are justified by decision makers through various political constructions and highly depending on a ‘everyday terrorism in France’s context’ strengthening the delineation of the imminent threat by a terrorist other who aimed to destroy western civilization and therefore emphasise the existential threat narrative to legitimate action. 

Other projects

I recently contributed to a case study on Tunisia and newly democratized regimes for the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU, Geneva) upcoming Global Parliamentary Report on public engagement in the work of Parliaments. 

I did two research assistantships: 

• one in 2020 for a period of 3 months, under the supervision of Dr Nora Steppert, which involved the creation of a bibliography, and transcripts of interviews;
• one in 2020/2021 for a period of 9 months, as a research assistant for the IPU (InterParliamentary Union) which involved writing some elements of the 3^rd Global Parliamentary Report published https://www.ipu.org/our-impact/strong-parliaments/setting-standards/global-parliamentary-report/global-parliamentary-report-2022-public-engagement-in-work-parliament 

Research Interest 

• Counterterrorism 
• Terrorism
• Securitisation
• Security Studies
• French counterterrorism politics 
• Human Rights Law & International Law

Forthcoming publications

Feulner, F., Gueguin, M. 2022. Building Public Engagement in Small Island Nations. Journal of Legislative Studies Special Issue on Public Engagement in the Work of Parliaments: Global practitioner perspectives. (forthcoming). 

Gueguin, M. forthcoming. Are French counterterrorism strategies a colonial legacy? What remains from the colonial matrix when constructing and responding to the threat of terrorism? In: Abbas, T., Dutta, S., and Bergh, S. 2022. (forthcoming). 

Qualifications

• Bachelor of Laws (Université de Rennes 1, France)
• LLM International Law (University of Southampton)
• MA Terrorism, Security and Insurgency (University of Leeds)

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Global Security Challenges