Vernacular Security Studies: Concepts, Cases and Critiques

This book covers new conceptual, methodological, and empirical issues that will progress debate on Vernacular Security Studies (VSS) and the value of studying ordinary articulations of (in)security. Bringing together established and emerging scholars, it offers a timely and much needed engagement with this explicitly critical - and increasingly prominent - framework in security research. Demonstrating its value in different geographical, thematic, and historical contexts these experts consider the impact of VSS on a range of topical issues including multi-species relations, decolonial/ postcolonial approaches to security, migration, borders, and cities. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and students engaging with ’bottom-up’ approaches in critical security studies or critical International Relations.

Lee Jarvis is Professor of Security and Society at Adelaide University, Australia. He holds honorary professorships at the University of East Anglia, UK, and Loughborough University, UK. Lee’s research focuses on the construction and communication of security challenges. He co-edits the journal Critical Studies on Terrorism, and has over sixty articles and sixteen books on the politics of security, including Times of Terror: Discourse, Temporality and the War on Terror; Anti-Terrorism, Citizenship and Security (with Michael Lister) and Banning Them, Securing Us? Terrorism, Parliament and the Ritual of Proscription (with Tim Legrand). Lee’s work has been funded by organisations including the ESRC, the AHRC, the Australian Research Council, NATO, and the US Office of Naval Research.

Michael Lister is Professor of Politics at Oxford Brookes University, UK. His research focuses on the intersections between citizenship and terrorism/counterterrorism. He is the author of Public Opinion and Counterterrorism: Security and Politics in the UK (2023) and co-editor of The State: Theories and Issues 2nd Edition (2022). He has published research in Political Studies, Parliamentary Affairs, International Relations, British Journal of Politics and International Relations amongst others. He has presented his research findings widely, including to the Home Office, the Welsh Assembly and police officers.

Akinyemi Oyawale is an Assistant Professor in International Relations in the Politics and International Studies Department (PAIS) at the University of Warwick, UK. Akin holds a PhD from the University of East Anglia and is interest in investigating terrorism, counterterrorism, radicalization, extremism through a critical approach and he has previously investigated how Boko Haram terrorism and state counterterrorism have interacted to impact on the (in)security of citizens in Northeast Nigeria.