Lee Jarvis is a Professor of International Politics at Loughborough University and a specialist in the politics of security. Lee also holds an honorary position as an Adjunct Professor in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Adelaide.
Lee is author or editor of 15 books, and over fifty academic articles. His research has been funded by various external organisations including the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council (ESRC), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Australian Research Council (ARC), NATO, and the U.S. Office for Naval Research. Lee co-edits the academic journal Critical Studies on Terrorism, and has founded or directed research networks and groups including the multinational, multidisciplinary Cyberterrorism Project, and the Critical Studies on Terrorism working group of the British International Studies Association (BISA).
Lee’s PhD was awarded in 2008 from the University of Birmingham. Since then he has supervised ten research students to completion, and examined eighteen theses including for universities in Australia, Italy, New Zealand and the UK.
Lee engages with a range of non-academic partners, including policymakers, parliamentarians, police forces, advocacy groups, and local communities. A recent project, for instance, culminated in a screening of original films on 'British [Muslim] Values' produced by participant researchers from Muslim communities in Eastern England. Lee currently sits on the Peer Review Colleges for the ESRC and the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund, and have reviewed grant applications, monographs, or articles for over forty-five organisations. In 2023 Lee was elected as a trustee of the British International Studies Association.
Prior to his appointment at Loughborough, Lee held academic posts at Oxford Brookes University, Swansea University, and the University of East Anglia. In the latter, he served as Associate Dean for Research for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, with responsibility for leading, developing and implementing Faculty strategy with respect to research across four large Schools and an Interdisciplinary Institute. That role built on four years of service as Research Director for the School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies. Other leadership positions he has held include Course Director, and Director of Undergraduate Admissions.
Lee’s research is situated within critical approaches to Security Studies, International Relations and contemporary political theory. It focuses on constructions of, and responses to, security threats such as terrorism, radicalisation, extremism, cybersecurity, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Lee’s specific interests include:
1. The politics of counter-terrorism. Lee’s work explores how politicians discuss, justify and 'sell' counter-terrorism policy to various audiences, and the impact of such efforts upon communities and citizens. This includes the ESRC-funded Anti-terrorism, Citizenship and Security (with Michael Lister), and the AHRC-funded British [Muslim] Values: Conflict or Convergence (with Lee Marsden and Eylem Atakav). Ongoing work on proscription (with Tim Legrand) explores the politics of listing specific terrorist organisations, while Lee’s first book, Times of Terror, explored how the George W. Bush administration constructed the then-unfolding 'war on terror' around specific and distinct conceptions of temporality. If you are interested in these topics, you might be interested in this article which focuses on the impact of counter-terrorism policy upon lived experiences for citizenship, or this piece on how politicians debate whether or not to blacklist terrorist groups.
2. Critical terrorism studies and critical security studies. Lee’s research also offers a conceptual and methodological contribution to the sub-fields within which his work tends to be situated. This includes agenda-setting discussion around the parameters and core commitments of critical security studies and critical terrorism studies - including this piece on the 'spaces and faces' of critical terrorism studies. It also includes conceptual work around 'vernacular security studies' and 'stakeholder security', as well as work that proceeds through the introduction of relatively novel methods (for these fields) including digital storytelling and focus groups. You might be interested in the published version of his inaugural lecture - Terrorism, counter-terrorism, and critique - which offered a new heuristic of critical strategies for those dissatisfied with the politics of counter-terrorism, or in this recent article on the 'vernacular turn' within International Relations and Security Studies.
3. Social constructions and memories of terrorism. Lee’s work also explores how 'terrorism' is constructed, situated and remembered across different social and cultural sites. Here he has worked on texts as diverse as memorial webpages established to commemorate victims of terrorism, military videogames, news media coverage, political rhetoric, and - most recently - obituaries of dead 'terrorists'. Lee’s focus here tends to be on how these texts and practices constitute or frame their subjects in specific ways. You might be interested in his co-authored book, Terrorism: A Critical Introduction which explores some of these dynamics, or this article on memory in the aftermath of Osama bin Laden's killing.
4. Cybersecurity. Lee also works on issues around cybersecurity and - especially - cyberterrorism, focusing specifically on questions of definition, threat and response. Much of this work is inter-disciplinary in scope - bringing in partners from Law, Engineering, Computer Science, Criminology and beyond - and emerges out of the Cyberterrorism Project which he co-founded with Stuart Macdonald and Tom Chen. If you have interests in cybersecurity you might be interested in this article on competing understandings of 'cyberterrorism'.
As the above suggests, Lee’s research is often collaborative and frequently inter-disciplinary in nature, and he has coauthored, coedited, and otherwise worked with scholars in a wide range of disciplines including Law, Media Studies, Engineering, Criminology, Political Science, and International Relations. You can find citation information for his work via google scholar.
Lee has taught and convened modules at undergraduate and postgraduate level on a range of themes within Politics and International Relations including terrorism, counter-terrorism, security studies, International Relations theory, philosophy of social science, and research methods.
Lee has a track record of supervising PhD students on a range of topics relating to his research, including: cyber-terrorism, the Lockerbie Bombing, far right extremism, countering the financing of terrorism, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and Nigerian counter-terrorism, and counter-terrorism within the EU. Please feel free to contact Lee with expressions of interest in postgraduate study.
- Jarvis, L. & Whiting, A. (forthcoming) (En)Gendering the Dead Terrorist: (De)Constructing Masculinity in Terrorist Media Obituaries’, International Studies Quarterly.
- Jarvis, L. (online first) ‘Counting security in the vernacular: Quantification rhetoric in ‘everyday’ (in)security discourse’, International Political Sociology.
- Jarvis, L. & Robinson, N. (online first) ‘Oh Help! Oh No! The International Politics of The Gruffalo: Children’s Picturebooks and World Politics’, Review of International Studies.
- Jarvis, L. & Legrand, T. (2020) Banning Them, Securing Us? Terrorist Organisations and the Politics of Proscription in Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- Jarvis, L. (2019) ‘Toward a vernacular security studies: origins, interlocutors, contributions and challenges’, International Studies Review 21(6): 107-126.
- Jarvis, L. & Lister, M. (2015) Anti-terrorism, Citizenship and Security. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- Jackson, R., Jarvis, L., Gunning, J. & Breen Smyth, M. (2011) Terrorism: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Jarvis, L. (2009) Times of Terror: Discourse, Temporality and the War on Terror. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.