(Lead researchers: Cumming, Egede, Marsh)

This cluster overlaps with work in Political Theory (Boucher, Pateman and Sutch) and Histories, Memories and Fictions (Nuselovici, Prout and Topping).

Cumming has just completed a three-year research project (2007-2010) funded by a British Academy large research grant and focusing on European Foreign and Security Policy and, more specifically, France and Britain in Africa since Saint-Malo. Together with Professor Tony Chafer (Portsmouth University), he hosted research seminars at Chatham House (June 2010), Cardiff University (October 2009) and Portsmouth University (July 2008). A final presentation will be made to the prestigious French foreign policy think tank, the Institut français des relations internationals, in November 2010.

Cumming advised the FCO Strategy Unit on UK policy towards West Africa and has produced single- and joint-authored articles on Anglo-French cooperation in Africa, UK-French security collaboration, and Anglo-French cooperation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is currently completing, with Professor Chafer, an edited book entitled From Rivalry to Partnership: New Approaches to the Challenges of Africa (Ashgate 2011).

Cumming has also recently advised the European Commission on civil society-building in Cameroon. He drew upon the findings of his monograph French NGOs in the Global Era, Palgrave 2009 – the groundwork for which was funded by a Leverhulme Fellowship- as well as upon his earlier research into French government-NGO capacity-building programmes and into French and British development assistance to Africa, Aid to Africa (Ashgate).

Egede is a new appointment who is researching the use of international law as regulative norms in relations between Africa and the EU, in relation to human rights and the law of the sea.

Marsh’s research is located within a post-World War Two transatlantic context, with emphasis on international security, American foreign policy, Anglo-American relations and European Union external relations. His research on Cold War Anglo-American relations in Iran was supported by grants from the British Academy and from the Harry S Truman library. It led to a monograph Anglo-American Relations and Cold War Oil (Palgrave, 2003) and a number of journal articles showing the intricacies of Anglo-American competitive cooperation in protecting Western interests in Iran and the wider Middle East. In 2007 Marsh was invited speaker at a specialist workshop in Houston, USA, on international energy. In 2009 he published research on the importance of changes in the structures and ownership of international energy to contemporary US handling of Iran’s nuclear programme.