Current Postgraduate Students

Professor Louise Amoore, BA (Hons), MA, PhD

Contact Professor Louise Amoore (email at louise.amoore@durham.ac.uk)

Biography

Louise Amoore researches and teaches in the areas of global geopolitics, security, and political theory. She has particular interests in how contemporary forms of data, analytics and risk management are changing the techniques of border control and security. Louise is currently ESRC Global Uncertainties leadership fellow (2012-2015). Her fellowship project 'Securing Against Future Events' (SaFE): Preemption, Protocols and Publics' examines how inferred futures become the basis for new forms of security risk calculus.

Louise's new book, The Politics of Possibility: Risk and Security Beyond Probability (2013) is in press with Duke University Press. The book maps out the politics of possibility that has come to characterize contemporary life, tracing its genesis into the diverse worlds of risk consulting, computer science, commercial logistics, and data mining and visualization. The book depicts the coalescence of two distinctive orientations to the uncertain future: one, derived from the worlds of economy and commerce, that conceives of harnessing the economic possibilities and opportunities of risk; and the other, characteristic of sovereign security, that seeks to act upon low probability high impacty events via the arraying of multiple paths of possibility. In the coming together of these worlds, decisions are made on the basis of possible associations between people, objects, places and events.

Louise Amoore's previous projects include two ESRC projects on the techniques and technologies deployed in the 'war on terror'. 'Contested Borders' (2007-2009) is a project within the ESRC's non-governmental public action programme. The work has produced new insights into how contemporary security practices enter and reconfigure public space.

'Data Wars: New Spaces of Governing in the European War on Terror' is a three year ESRC bilateral project in collaboration with Marieke de Goede at the University of Amsterdam. Researchers at Durham and Amsterdam investigated how data elements from the mobilities of people and money become redeployed for preemptive security.

Research Groups

• International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU)
• Politics - State - Space (PSS)
• Social / Spatial Theory (SST)

Research Projects

• Contested Borders: Non governmental public action and the technologies of the war on terror
• Data Wars: New Spaces of Governing in the European War on Terror

Supervises

• Mr Nathaniel O'Grady
• Mr Christopher Wood
• Mr Peter Forman

Selected Publications

Books: authored

• Amoore, L. (2002). Globalisation contested: An international political economy of work. Manchester.: Manchester University Press.

Books: edited

• Amoore, L. & de Goede, M. (2008). Risk and the War on Terror. London: Routledge.
• Amoore, L. (2005). The Global Resistance Reader. London.: Routledge.

Books: sections

• Amoore, L. (Published). Governing By Identity. In Playing the identity card: surveillance, security and ifentifcation in global perspective. Lyon, D. & Bennett, C. New York.: Routledge. 42-56.
• Amoore, L. (Published). Vigilant Visualities. In Observant States: Geopolitics and Visual Culture. MacDonald, F., Hughes, R. & Dodds, K. London.: IB Taurus. 247-266.
• Amoore, L. (2007). There is no Great Refusal: the ambivalent politics of dissent. In International Political Economy and Poststructural Politics. De Goede, M. Basingstoke.: Macmillan.
• Amoore, L. & Langley, P. (2005). Global civil society and global governmentality. In The Idea of Global Civil Society. Germain, R. & Kerry, M. Routledge. 137-155.
• Amoore, L. (2005). Invisible Subjects: Work and Workers in the Global Political Economy. In The Political Economy of Unprotected Work. Davies, M. & Ryner, M. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
• Amoore, L. (2005). Making the Modern Multinational. In Global Corporate Power. May, C. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.
• Amoore, L. & Langley, P. (2002). Process, Project and Practice: The Politics of Globalization. In Critical Perspectives on International Political Economy. Abbott, J. & Worth, O. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
• Amoore, L. (2002). Work Production and Social Relations: Repositioning the firm in the international political economy. In Global Unions? Theory and Strategies of Organized Labour in the Global Political Economy. Harrod, J. & O'Brien, R. London.: Routledge. 29-48.

Journal papers: academic

• Amoore, L.A. (2011). Data Derivatives: On the Emergence of a Security Risk Calculus for our Times. Theory, Culture & Society 28(6): 24-43.
• Amoore, L. & Hall, A. (2010). Border Theatre: On the arts of security and resistance. Cultural Geographies 17(3): 299-319.
• Amoore, L. (2009). Algorithmic war: everyday geographies of the war on terror. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 41(1): 49-69.
• Amoore, L. (2009). Lines of sight: on the visualization of unknown futures. Citizenship Studies 13(1): 17-30.
• Amoore, L. (2008). Foucault against the grain. International Political Sociology 2(3): 274-276.
• Amoore, L. (2008). Risk before justice: when the law contests its own suspension. Leiden Journal of International Law 21(4): 847-861.
• Amoore, L. & de Goede, M. (2008). Transactions after 9/11: the banale face of the preemptive strike. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 33(2): 173-185.
• Amoore, L. (2007). Vigilant Visualities: The Watchful Politics of the War on Terror. Security Dialogue 38(2): 215-232.
• Amoore, L. (2006). Biometric borders: Governing mobilities in the war on terror. Political Geography 25(3): 336-351.
• Amoore, L. & De Goede, M. (2005). Governance, risk and dataveillance in the war on terror. Crime, Law and Social Change 43: 149-173.
• Amoore, L. & Langley, P. (2004). Ambiguities of Global Civil Society. Review of International Studies 30(1): 89-110.
• Amoore, L. (2004). Risk, reward and discipline at work. Economy and Society 33(2): 174-196.
• Amoore, L. (2003). Beyond the Trade-off: Ambiguous (Un)employment and the Discourse of Flexibility. Global Society 17(1): 81-87.
• Amoore, L. & Langley, P. (2001). Experiencing Globalization: Active Teaching and Learning and Teaching in International Political Economy. International Studies Perspectives 2(1): 15-32.
• Amoore, L. (2000). International Political Economy and the 'Contested Firm'. New Political Economy 5(2): 183-204.
• Amoore, L., Dodgson, R., Germain, R.D., Gills, B.K., Langley, P. & Watson, I. (2000). Paths to a historicized international political economy. Review of International Political Economy 7(1): 53-71.

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