People

Professor Rory Cormac

Director

Rory Cormac is a Professor of International Relations specialising in Secret Intelligence and Covert Action.

Rory has written five books, most recently, The Secret Royals: Spying and the Crown from Victoria to Diana (Atlantic, 2021)

Alongside Richard J. Aldrich, he has researched and fronted three documentaries for Channel 4: Spying on the Royals (2017), D-Day: The King who Fooled Hitler (2019) and The Queen and the Coup (2020).

He has appeared at the Hay, Cheltenham and Edinburgh Literary Festivals, and regularly features in national and international media outlets, including most UK newspapers, BBC Breakfast, BBC 5Live, BBC Radio 4, BBC History Magazine, and, in America, NBC and National Geographic.

Rory has spoken at the UK Cabinet Office, Home Office, Number 10 and Ministry of Defence, as well as the US State Department and Pentagon.

In 2018, he held a Leverhulme International Academic Fellowship based at Johns Hopkins University. Between 2015 and 2017, he held an AHRC Fellowship examining British approaches to covert action, 1945-1968.

Rory is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Before joining Nottingham, Rory worked at the University of Warwick and King's College London.

Sean Fleming

Sean Fleming is a Nottingham Research Fellow in the Faculty of Social Sciences. He is a political theorist and historian of political thought. Sean's first book Leviathan on a Leash: A Theory of State Responsibility (Princeton, 2020), was about issues of collective responsibility in international politics: treaties, sovereign debts, reparations, and economic sanctions.

Sean is currently working on a new book Revenge of the Luddites: The Unabomber and the Rise of Anti-Tech Radicalism.He also has research interests in radical environmentalism, ecofascism, and green anarchism.

Dr Louise Kettle

Louise Kettle is currently working on a new book on the relationship between Britain and Iran. She has also has been accepted onto the University of Nottingham's Institute of Policy and Engagement’s Policy Impact Pathways Programme and is taking part in a RUSI-led UK-Russia Expert Dialogue on the Foreign Policy Challenges in the Middle East and North Africa. She has recently completed a commissioned report for the Cabinet Office on foreign policy planning and strategy. 

In the autumn of 2021 Louise appeared on two different episodes of Britain’s Forgotten Wars with Tony Robinson - one on the Gulf War and one on the Suez crisis. 

In September 2021 she had a chapter published in a new book What next for Britain in the Middle East? published by Bloomsbury.

Dr Jason Klocek

Jason Klocek is Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. He is also a Senior Researcher at the United States Institute of Peace and a Faculty Affiliate of the University of Notre Dame's Center for the Study of Religion and Society.

Jason's research and teaching interests primarily lie at the intersection of political violence and repression, with particular attention to the role of religion. He has published in the Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other scholarly and media outlets.

His current book project explores how counterinsurgents construe and respond to religious rebellions with an empirical focus on British insurgency wars during the early postwar period. 

Dr Daniel Lomas

Dan is Assistant Professor in International Relations, specialising in the UK intelligence community.

He is currently working on a new book looking at the cultural and political history of UK security vetting, and has been contracted to write a short history of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6).

He is also interested in public attitudes to intelligence and security in the UK, and the public engagement strategies used by the UK agencies – MI5, GCHQ and SIS. Dan’s teaching focuses on intelligence and security. 

Other than publish academic work, Dan has contributed to the RUSI think-tank and History of Government Blog, and has discussed spying with the BBC, Channel 4 news, ITV, Sky News, CNN, ABC News, The Guardian, The Times, and other media organisations. He can be found tweeting intelligence and security related news and thoughts via @Sandbagger_01.

Previously he was Senior Lecturer in Intelligence and Security at Brunel University London

Dr Natalie Martin

Dr Natalie Martin is an Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations, and former BBC journalist - specialising in Turkish politics, the Turkey-EU relationship, the role of the news media in liberal democracies, and the security implications of Brexit.

Natalie's teaching has focused on Politics and International Relations theories, metatheories and methodologies - and how they interact. Her most recent publication was published by Palgrave Macmillan in July 2020, entitled 'The Securitisation of News in Turkey: Journalists as Terrorists?'.

Professor Andrew Mumford

Professor Andrew Mumford is an expert in counter-insurgency and sub-state violence. His book The Counter-Insurgency Myth: The British Experience of Irregular War was published in July 2011, and he is co-editor of International Law, Security and Ethics (Routledge, 2011).

He has published numerous articles relating to conflict, security and terrorism, including strategic planning for the war in Iraq, and the role of air power in counter-insurgency war. 

Andrew is also on the expert security panel of the EU/NATO European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats. He edited a special issue of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs on Hybrid Warfare in 2020. 

Professor Wyn Rees

Professor Wyn Rees' expertise is in three main areas of security politics: contemporary transatlantic relations, post-war British security policy, western counter-terrorism cooperation and Anglo-American relations.

Wyn's publications include The US-EU Security Relationship: The Tensions between a European and a Global Agenda (Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2011) and he is currently writing a study of UK-US military cooperation.

Professor Bettina Renz

Professor Bettina Renz is an expert in Russian security and defence policy. She has published widely on defence reforms and Russian military thinking and doctrine. Her recent book, Russia’s Military Revival, was published with Polity Press in 2018.