Dr Ruth Blakeley

BA (Bristol), MSc (Bristol), MRes (Bristol), PhD (Bristol)

Lecturer in International Relations

Profile

photograph

Room: Rutherford N4.E2
Tel: 01227 82)4504
R.J.Blakeley@kent.ac.uk

Ruth joined the School in 2007 after completing her doctorate on repression, human rights and US training of military forces from the global South at the University of Bristol. While completing her PhD, funded by the ESRC, Ruth spent three months in the US, conducting interviews with US Department of Defence staff involved in the training of Latin American military forces, and observing training at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly the School of the Americas).  Ruth is on the Academic Advisory Board for the Institute for Policy Research and Development at Sussex, and acted as academic consultant to investigative journalist John Pilger for his documentary War on Democracy, screened in UK cinemas and on ITV1 during 2007.  She is also a founding member of the Network of Activist Scholars for Politics and International Relations (NASPIR).

Languages: Spanish [fluent]

Research Interests

  • US foreign and security policy
  • US-Latin American Relations
  • Terrorism studies and state terrorism
  • The impact of US foreign policy on human rights
  • The neoliberalisation of Latin America
  • The use of torture by both authoritarian and liberal democratic states
Current Projects

Ruth is currently working on a project to evaluate the role of states from the Global South in the US-led policy of rendition and proxy detention in the ‘War on Terror’.

She is also working on a paper entitled ‘Filling the State Terrorism Gap – Historical Materialism and its Explanatory Potential’.

Selected Publications
2009 State Terrorism and Neoliberalism: The North in the South (London: Routledge)
2008 The Elephant in the Room: A Response to John Horgan and Michael J. Boyle, Critical Studies on Terrorism 1/2: 151-165
2007 Bringing the State Back into Terrorism Studies: European Political Science 6/3: 228-235
2007 Why Torture? Review of International Studies 33: 373-394
2006 Still Training to Torture? US Training of Military Forces from Latin America. Third World Quarterly 27/8: 1439-61.

Teaching

Undergraduate
Postgraduate
Research Supervision

Rosalind Holbrook
MPhil in International Conflict Analysis
Does Culture Affect the Efficacy of Truth Commissions?

David Maher
MPhil in International Relations
The political economy of Colombia’s Armed Conflict

Seelay Srak
PhD in International Relations
Global Governance and the response of the International Institutions to HIV/AIDS in Pakistan

Andrew Thomson
MPhil in International Relations
The nature of US counterinsurgency operations