Role
Jonathan's role as Deputy Head of Department (Principal Lecturer) is to provide academic leadership, strategic and operational management within the subject area of Politics and International Relations at undergraduate, postgraduate and commercial levels. His responsibilities encompass learning and teaching, scholarship and research, internationalisation together with a wider contribution to the mission of the University, College, School and subject team. His key responsibility is to support Dr Rose Gann (Head of Department) in the operational leadership of the Department of Social and Political Sciences.
Career overview
Jonathan has over twenty years’ experience teaching and learning a wide variety of subjects at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the fields of Politics, Political Economy, Sociology, International Development and International Relations. He has successfully supervised over 50 graduate students in a variety of areas ranging from the ethics of political violence to political theory, from democracy and democratisation in sub-Saharan Africa to political religion. He has supervised three PhD’s to completion and examined a further seven.
Previous to his employment at NTU, Jonathan taught Politics and International Relations at Northampton, Warwick and Staffordshire Universities. He earned his BA (Hons) from Staffordshire University and his MA and PhD in International Relations from Warwick University.
Research areas
Jonathan has published a number of articles, chapters and other contributions. He is author of 'Cold War Christians and the Spectre of Nuclear Deterrence' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Publications include:
- 'Cultures of Learning and Learning Culture: Socratic and Confucian Approaches to Teaching and Learning' in Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences (2012);
- two invited articles for Religion Compass (2011) exploring St. Augustine, the Ante-Nicene church and the ethics of political violence;
- ‘Terrorism’, in Don MacIver’s (ed.) Political Issues in the World Today, (Routledge, 2005); and
- ‘Just War’ or Just War? The Future(s) of a Tradition’ in Politics (2000).
His main interests lie in questions of critical political economy, political violence, notions of belief and unbelief, and issues of teaching / learning in HE.
External activity
Jonathan is an experienced External Examiner. He currently serves post-graduate provision at Leicester De Montfort University and has previously worked with BA Peace Studies and associated programmes at the University of Bradford; BA and MA International Relations at the University of Wales; and MA International Relations at Richmond American International University in London.
Press expertise
- National identity
- Religious identity
- Notions of belief and unbelief
- Political economy
- Capitalism as a quasi-religion
- Political violence
- Attitudes to nuclear weapons during the Cold War
- Youth culture
- Legacy of punk rock, mod and youth protest