Dr Elisabetta Brighi
I joined the DPIR in August 2014 as Lecturer in International Relations. After receiving a doctorate in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), I was a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) and later the first 'Bennet Boskey' Junior Research Fellow in International Relations at Exeter College, University of Oxford. I then held research and teaching positions at the University of Cambridge, University College London (UCL), the University of Milan 'La Cattolica' and the University of Naples 'L'Orientale'.
My field of expertise encompasses international security (war, irregular warfare, terrorism; urban security; the aesthetic and materiality of security), international political theory (pragmatism; new materialism; mimetic theory and international relations); and foreign policy (theoretical approaches to foreign policy; European foreign policy; Italian foreign policy).
I have authored four volumes, most recently Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics and International Relations: The Case of Italy (Routledge, 2013). My research has been supported by grants from the Economic Social and Research Council (ESRC), the Istituto Scienze Umane, and the Luigi Einaudi Foundation.
I am based in London and I divide my time between the study of international politics and my activity as a photographer. My photographic investigations of the changing contours of contemporary urban space have been exhibited in galleries in Oxford and London.
I am working on a number of projects on security, camouflage and the urban landscape which are linked on the one hand by an exploration of the changing everyday practices of security and on the other by a theoretical engagement with the work of a thinker neglected in IR, Gaston Bachelard. I am planning to bring these projects together in a monograph provisionally titled 'Security, Aesthetic and Camouflage in the City'.
I am also editing two volumes on mimetic theory in international relations. The first is a special issue on mimetic theory and international security (forthcoming for Journal of Political Theory in 2015), the second is an edited book on mimetic theory and political theory (forthcoming for Bloomsbury in 2016). This is part of a larger interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research project on mimesis in the social and human sciences.
Lastly, I am research-active in European foreign policy and Italian foreign policy. As for the former, I am contributing to a research project on theoretical innovations in European foreign policy analysis. As for the latter, I am currently leading two substantive projects in the area: one concerning the historical roots of the foreign policy priorities, paradigms and dilemmas of the 'Italian Left' and one on the challenges of a post-ideological foreign policy.