PhD Students: Chris Kitchen

Details

email : c.j.kitchen@sheffield.ac.uk

Thesis Title: Constructing Atlanticist and European Identity in British Foreign Policy towards Iran

Start Year: 2008

Supervisors

Rhiannon Vickers and Simon Bulmer

Research Topic

This thesis revolves around a single core question: How have American and European influences helped to construct identity and interests expressed in British foreign policy towards Iran since September 11, 2001? This necessarily implies two further questions.

Firstly, how have British foreign policy makers understood the United Kingdom's role in the world generally, and their relationship towards Iran particularly, in the post-Cold War era and how has this been affected by 9/11? Secondly, how have American and European normative and practical approaches to international relations developed since the attacks on New York and Washington, and how and to what extent have they influenced British policy towards Iran? These are important questions in considering the ongoing British response to the threat of global terrorism, but also in considering the more fundamental question of Britain's role in the world.

Theoretically, the thesis employs a two-stage constructivist approach to identity. It is my aim to be able to break down and categorise identity into components that allow for a more comparable and rigorous treatment of identity than is sometimes found in the international relations literature. In the first stage, I use a modified form of Abdelal et al.'s 2006 model of identity as a variable to analyser the self-understandings of the British foreign policy making elite and demonstrate how they are important to an understanding of policy interests and outcomes.

This model breaks identity into the following component elements:

1. constitutive norms
2. social purposes
3. relational comparisons
4. discursive practices

and aims to measure the level of contestation in each. This approach allows for a comparison of identity between the United Kingdom, the United States, and European Union member states both individually and collectively, while in the second stage I draw upon the work of Jeffrey Checkel and Alastair Iain Johnston to specify and analyse processes of social learning at the international level in order to understand continuity and change over time.

Academic Papers

• 'Identity as a Bedrock of Nuclear Trust: The Case of British Approaches to Iran', paper presented at the Trust-Building and the Nuclear Future symposium, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 7-8 September 2010.
• With Rhiannon Vickers, 'What is to be Done? Labour Traditions of International Order and the Dilemma of Action towards Iran', paper presented at the Interpreting UK Foreign Policy: Traditions and Dilemmas conference, University of California, Berkeley, 3 December 2010.
• 'Constructions of the Nuclear Threat from Iran in British Foreign Policy since September 11', paper presented at the British International Studies Association annual conference, Manchester, 27-29 April 2011.
• '[Don't] Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran? The Spectre of Military Action in UK Foreign Policy', paper presented at the University of Sheffield Department of Politics Graduate Symposium, Sheffield, 22 June 2011.

Teaching

Semester One 2011/12:
POL223: Contemporary International Relations Theory (Module Tutor)

Semester Two 2011/12:
POL219: Contemporary International Affairs (Module Tutor)
Office hour: Thursday 09:00 - 10:00, Elmfield Rm 1.29

Professional Affiliations

• British International Studies Association (BISA)

Education

• BA American Studies (University of Sheffield, 2001)
• MSc Global Politics (University of Southampton, 2004)

Academic Awards

• Anglo American Prize in History (University of Sheffield, 2001)
• Frankel Prize in Politics (University of Southampton, 2004)