Staff Profile
Dr Angharad Closs Stephens, BSc, MSc, MRes, PhD
Contact Dr Angharad Closs Stephens (email at a.c.stephens@durham.ac.uk)
Biography
Angharad is Lecturer in Human Geography and joined Durham University in 2007. Her PhD was in International Relations and her work combines an interest in politics and geography. Her first book manuscript, titled The Persistence of Nationalism: from imagined communities to urban encounters has just been published in the Routledge Interventions series (2013).
From 2006-2011, Angharad was co-convenor of the British International Studies Association Poststructural Politics Working Group. She has presented her work across Europe as well as in Canada, the United States, Japan, and Kenya.
Research
My research interests all derive from a general interest in developing critical approaches to the study and politics of nationalism. This work combines several lines of inquiry, including,
- the politics of security and the governing of differences;
- cities, citizenship and reformulating understandings of coexistence;
- ideas of space/time and how they enable different imaginings of the political;
- the connections between politics and aesthetics.
Work on the politics of security has included a co-edited book studying critical responses to the London bombings of 7 July 2005, Terrorism and the Politics of Response (2009) and a number of research articles exploring different aspects of the 'imaginative geographies' of the War on Terror (2007, 2011). The interest in reformulating ideas of coexistence (in ways that defy a 'nationalist imaginary') has been developed in a research article on sites of memory in Berlin (2010) and a co-written article that uses an art installation to rework the idea of 'community' (2012). Both these articles experiment with working with non-linear ideas of time and non-bounded understandings of space. They have also led to a broader interest in how aesthetic interventions, including literary texts (2011), prompt different ways of imagining the political and understanding relations with others in the world.
If you would like a pdf copy of any of these papers, please get in touch with me directly.
In the Autumn term of 2013, I will be taking up a Fellowship at Durham University's Institute of Advanced Study, to carry out a project titled, 'Partial Illuminations: literary geographies and the politics of coexistence'.
Teaching
All my teaching draws heavily on my current research work and aims to combine theoretical arguments with empirical examples from the world around us. I currently teach on the following courses:
- Geographies of Crisis (Level 1);
- Political Geography (Level 2);
- Urban Change in Europe (Level 3, including 7-day fieldtrip to the city of Berlin);
- Politics/Space: Drawing Lines, Writing the World (Level 3);
- Risk, Security and Society (Level 4).
I would be delighted to hear from any students wishing to study for a Masters or PhD who are interested in similar research areas.
Research Groups
- International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU)
- Politics - State - Space (PSS)
- Social / Spatial Theory (SST)
- Urban Worlds
Research Interests
- Critical approaches to nationalism
- The politics of security and critical approaches to 'terrorism'
- Cities and citizenship
- Coexistence and the politics of difference
- Theories of modernity and ideas of space/time
- Feminist and postcolonial literature and theory
- Critical theory
- Politics and aesthetics
Selected Publications
Journal papers: academic
- Closs Stephens, A. & Squire, V. Citizenship without community?. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 2012;30:434-436.
- Closs Stephens, A. & Squire, V. Politics through a web: citizenship and community unbound. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 2012;30:551-567.
- Closs Stephens, A. Beyond Imaginary Geographies? Critique, Co-optation and Imagination in the Aftermath of the War on Terror. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 2011;29:254 – 267
- Closs Stephens, A. Citizenship without community: time, design and the city. Citizenship Studies. 2010;14:31-46.
- Closs Stephens A. Weighing heavily in-between. Review of International Studies. 2009;35:866-868.
- Closs Stephens & A. Seven million Londoners, one London: National and urban ideas of community in the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 bombings in London. Alternatives. 2007;32:155-176.
- Closs Stephens, A. Democratising Local Government in Wales. Contemporary Wales. 2004;16:133-149.
Journal papers: popular
- Closs Stephens, Angharad 'Welsh Keywords: Cymuned' (Community). Planet: the Welsh Internationalist. Published;208:49-56.
Books: edited
- Closs Stephens, A. & Vaughan-Williams, N. Terrorism and the Politics of Response. London and New York: Routledge; 2008.
Books: sections
- Closs Stephens, A. & Vaughan-Williams, N Introduction: London, Time, Terror. In: Closs Stephens, A. & Vaughan-Williams, N. Terrorism and the Politics of Response. London and New York: Routledge; 2009:1-15.
- Closs Stephens, A. Walter Benjamin. In: Edkins, J. & Vaughan-Williams, N. Critical Theorists and International Relations. London and New York: Routledge; 2009:77-88.
- Closs Stephens, A. Seven Million Londoners, One London: National and Urban Ideas of Community in the Aftermath of the 7 July 2005 Bombings in London. In: Architectures of Fear. Barcelona: Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona; 2008:43-64.