Kevork Oskanian

Biography

I was awarded my MSc (Distinction) in International Relations by Royal Holloway, University of London in 2006 and my PhD in the same subject by the London School of Economics in 2011. My PhD thesis (supervised by Dr. Roy Allison and Prof. Barry Buzan) was based on a conceptual expansion of Regional Security Complex Theory’s hybrid, material/ideational approach, and its application to the conflicts of the South Caucasus. I am also a former co-editor of the Millennium Journal of International Studies, and have previously taught International Security, International Relations Theory and International Political Economy at the London School of Economics and the University of Westminster. I tweet at @CrazyPsyKO and blog at http://kovkaz.blogspot.com/, as well as contributing occasionally to Open Democracy, The Conversation, and the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Apart from English, I also have a fluent command of Dutch, Armenian (Western and Eastern), German and French, and knowledge of both Russian and modern Greek.

Research Interest

My research profile incorporates three distinct strands of scholarship: firstly, an engagement with theories of International Security and International Relations that combine material and ideational elements, including constructivism, various forms of realism, and the Copenhagen School; secondly, a concern with the role of various - liberal, post-colonial - ideologies in the strategic behaviour of Western and non-Western actors; and, thirdly, a more empirical focus on the (inter)regional politics of the former Soviet Union. This has most recently resulted in research on the role of the Russian and Soviet imperial legacies in the politics of contemporary Eurasia. Combining historical and discursive methodologies, I examine conditions in the former Soviet space from a combined post-colonial and constructivist perspective, albeit one adapted to Russia’s perceived position between East and West, through the operationalization of a new concept - ‘hybrid exceptionalism’. Building on previous theoretical work on the Copenhagen School, I have now also initiated a more theoretically centred research project on ‘micro-securitisations’: it aims to turn Securitisation Theory’s top-down perspective into one acknowledging the dialectical and chaotic nature of societies’ often incompatible security narratives, capturing a range of phenomena emerging from disconnects between elites and their general populations: among others state weakness, populism, and information wars.