Profile

Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Director of Graduate Studies Research

Member of Conflict, Security and Human Rights Research Group

Member of Conflict Analysis Research Centre

Member of Latin American Research Cluster

Contact

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

Ruth joined the School in 2007. Her research focuses on the use of state violence and state terrorism, particularly by liberal democratic states. She is currently working on a project, funded by the ESRC, which analyses the Globalisation of Extraordinary Rendition and Secret Detention. Ruth is involved with the International State Crime Initiative run by Harvard, KCL and Hull Universities, and she is Associate Editor of the Journal Critical Studies on Terrorism. She completed her doctorate on Repression, Human Rights and US Training of Military Forces from the Global South, funded by the ESRC, at the University of Bristol. While completing her PhD, Ruth conducted interviews with US Department of Defence staff involved in the training of Latin American military forces, and spent two months observing training at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly the School of the Americas).  Ruth is an elected member of the Board of Trustees for the British International Studies Association. She acted as academic consultant to investigative journalist John Pilger for his documentary War on Democracy, screened in UK cinemas and on ITV1 during 2007. Ruth is interested in supervising PhD students in the fields of US foreign and security policy, state violence and terrorism, Critical Security Studies and Critical Terrorism Studies, Human Rights, and US-Latin American Relations.