Dr Jac St John
I have worked at the Univeristy of Westminster since 2016, first as a Visiting Lecturer and as of 2021, as a full-time Lecturer in Politics and International Relations. In 2020 I completed an AHRC-funded PhD in Modern History at the University of St Andrews. Prior to that I completed a MSc in Contemporary History at the University of Edinburgh (2015) and a BA in History and Politics at Queen Mary, University of London (2012).
My research focuses on histories of policing, surveillance, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, mapping the development of UK practices from decolonisation to the ‘War on Terror’. In February 2024, my University of Westminster colleague, Professor Sam Raphael, and I launched Unredacted, a research unit that investigates and documents secretive UK state and corporate practices in the context of national security. My current focus is a project on UK Special Forces war crimes in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013. Prior to this I worked as a Research Associate with the ESRC-funded Rendition Project, co-directed by Professor Raphael and Professor Ruth Blakeley (University of Sheffield), which helped to uncover and document the use of rendition, detention and torture by the US and the UK.