Academic Staff: Mark Bailey

Dr Mark Bailey, BA, MA, PhD, (Newcastle)

University Teacher in International Political Economy

Telephone: +44 (0)114 222 1663
Fax: +44 (0)114 222 1717
Room: G55, Elmfield

Email: mark.bailey@sheffield.ac.uk

Profile

Mark Bailey took an undergraduate degree in History and Politics at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and went on to undertake both taught postgraduate (MA: International Political Economy) and doctoral study at the same institution. His PhD thesis focus on the role of mythological thought, in particular the usage of utopian and eschatolological narratives of history, in the construction and legitimation of world orders. Inspired in particular by the political philosophies of Ernst Cassirer and Eric Voegelin, he continues to pursue this line of interest in his present research undertakings which, in addition to completing a monograph concerning the usage of political mythology by the George W. Bush administration as part of Routledge’s ‘Rethinking Globalization’ series, includes critically analysing the mythological aspects of the work of economist Milton Friedman and the American neoconservative movement. In addition to teaching at the University of Sheffield, he has previously held teaching positions at the Universities of Newcastle, Sunderland, Lancaster, Leicester, and University College London.

Teaching

My philosophy of teaching involves giving students at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level a sense of ownership and empowerment of their learning, and an ability to see themselves as already theorists about the world by virtue of the fact that they are agents within it. In so doing, they attain greater confidence in their own intuitive and reasoning abilities, and thus feel emboldened to engage in confident, critical analysis and thus speak truth to power. An equally important aspect of my teaching philosophy is to use an issues-based approach that gives students the opportunity to critically explore what they already find familiar, thus leading them to intellectually engage with the linkages between theory and practice in both academia and life more generally. In particular, my approach aims to avoid the ‘dead white guys’ problem of seeing theory as something akin to an intellectual museum that has little relation to, and no bearing on, the ‘real’ world of events. Instead, by leading from practice to theory, my teaching illustrates to students that not only will different theoretical traditions give different explanations of those events, but that theory is itself and living dynamic entity that both shapes and is shaped by human action. Finally, from my own research I encourage students to think carefully about the relationship between the rational and the non-rational in politics, suggesting to them that even those theories, such as neo-realism, that claim an absolutely objective and rational epistemological and ontological standpoint, are often guilty of smuggling into their presuppositions of the world a variety of utopianistic and highly subjective assumptions.

Recent Invited Papers and Keynote Lectures

• May 2012 - BISA Post-Structuralist Working Group Conference, Political Violence in International Relations After the Death of God, University of Leeds, May 12th, 2012, 'God’s Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated: Political Violence and Apocalyptic Myth in Modernity'
• May 2010 – Department of European Language and Cultures Staff and Postgraduate Colloquium, Myth, Memory, and Identity In Transnational Politics, ‘Cassirer Revisited: Myth and the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms in the Age of Globalisation; the Neo-Zapatista Movement’
• February 2010 – Lancaster University Latin American Research Cluster one-day workshop Imaginaries of Modernity in Latin America - ‘Myth, Resistance and the Zapatista Movement: From (Post)Modern Politics of Resistance to a Narrative of Ossification?’
• February 2010 – International Studies Association (ISA), New Orleans- ‘Myth, Hubris, and American Neoconservatism’

Professional activities and recognition

• British International Studies Association (BISA) - Full Member
• Political Studies Association (PSA) – Graduate Member

Current Research

• The Role of Political Myth in legitimating visions of World Order
• The Politics of Global Development
• United States Foreign Policy since 1945
• The Political Philosophies of Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss and Ernst Cassirer