Role

 Associate Researcher, Sussex Centre for Global Health.  

Qualifications

PhD International Relations, University of Sussex

MSc Social Research Methods, University of Sussex

BA (Hons) Development Studies and Politics, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London

Activities

Nadine is co-investigator to the International Collaboratory on Critical Methods in Security Studies (ICCM). For more information, see www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/iccm/

Nadine's research is concerned with problematizing academic and policy debates, especially those relating to security, mobility and health, by analysing the way thinking about and acting upon the world has been framed in these debates. Combining a Foucauldian analysis of governmentality, the sociology and philosophy of science (Latour, Deleuze & Guattari and Bennett) and critical International Relations theory with detailed analyses of practices, her work has proceeded along four interrelated lines of enquiry. 

Firstly, she has explored the assemblages of knowledge and power through which human security is governed today. Specifically, she has done so in relation to forced migration (including trafficking) and health security in Thailand and Vietnam. She has found that human security is not just an institutional discourse and set of policies but a messy and highly technical governing practice embedded in specific contexts in which multiple relations, objects, knowledges, and subjects are assembled. She also explored the role of materiality such as technological artefacts in human security assemblages. 

Secondly, as a co-investigator, she has explored critical methods for security studies as part of the International Collaboratory on Critical Methods for Security Studies (ICCM). This project analysed the potential for emerging critical methods (situated practices, genealogy, materiality, mapping and visuality) for security issues. 

Thirdly, building on her interest in materiality, she has also collaboratively explored the critical method to analyse objects of security within the ‘discourses and materiality’ cluster of the ICCM. The cluster has written a methodological piece on discourse analysis that incorporates attention to objects of security. 

Fourthly, she has begun exploring the medicalization of security and the assemblages of knowledge and power through which practices of health security proceed today. 

Voelkner, Nadine Miriam Tita (2012) Tracing human security assemblages. In: Research methods in critical security studies: an introduction. Routledge, London. ISBN 9780415535403

Voelkner, Nadine (2011) Managing pathogenic circulation: human security and the migrant health assemblage in Thailand. Security Dialogue, 42 (3). pp. 239-259. ISSN 0967-0106

Voelkner, Nadine (2010) A Review of Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples. King's Law Journal, 21. pp. 210-12. ISSN 0961-5768

Voelkner, Nadine (2010) Governmentalizing the State: The Disciplining Logic of Human Security. In: Security and Global Governmentality: Globalization, Governance and the State. Routledge.