Upcoming Presentations and Public Lectures
'"What Kind of American Are You?" Plotting Civil War within the PWCP Continuum', Popular Culture and World Politics v16, Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal (20-21 November 2025)
The verb ‘to plot’ carries two meanings: on one hand, to plot something means placing it on a plane to understand its relationship to other things; on the other, it reflects a conspiracy to achieve some (nefarious) end. In this paper, I assess the controversial popular-culture artefact Civil War (2024) via the conceptual tool of plotting within the PWCP continuum. The work of English writer-director and geopolitical auteur Alex Garland, Civil War follows several journalists through an America in the throes of a second civil war triggered by a third-term president who has abolished the FBI therein prompting an improbable alliance of California and Texas against Washington. Premiering in the year before Donald Trump returned to the presidency, the film ‘plots’ a USA that is coming into focus via various forms executive overreach that could potentially lead to civil conflict if carried to their logical extremes. Drawing on the film’s visuals of political violence, landscape semiotics, discursive interventions, and its critical/popular reception, I examine the artefact as: 1) a generic depiction of civil conflict triggered by the decline of political norms in Western democracies which just happens to be set in America; 2) a US-specific plotting of how political violence is inherent to national traits embedded in American exceptionalism; 3) a fever dream of the globalist Hollywood elite that fails to recognise the elasticity of American pluralism and democratic safeguards; and 4) an extension of Garland’s geopolitical sculpting of an increasingly dystopian world politics.
The verb ‘to plot’ carries two meanings: on one hand, to plot something means placing it on a plane to understand its relationship to other things; on the other, it reflects a conspiracy to achieve some (nefarious) end. In this paper, I assess the controversial popular-culture artefact Civil War (2024) via the conceptual tool of plotting within the PWCP continuum. The work of English writer-director and geopolitical auteur Alex Garland, Civil War follows several journalists through an America in the throes of a second civil war triggered by a third-term president who has abolished the FBI therein prompting an improbable alliance of California and Texas against Washington. Premiering in the year before Donald Trump returned to the presidency, the film ‘plots’ a USA that is coming into focus via various forms executive overreach that could potentially lead to civil conflict if carried to their logical extremes. Drawing on the film’s visuals of political violence, landscape semiotics, discursive interventions, and its critical/popular reception, I examine the artefact as: 1) a generic depiction of civil conflict triggered by the decline of political norms in Western democracies which just happens to be set in America; 2) a US-specific plotting of how political violence is inherent to national traits embedded in American exceptionalism; 3) a fever dream of the globalist Hollywood elite that fails to recognise the elasticity of American pluralism and democratic safeguards; and 4) an extension of Garland’s geopolitical sculpting of an increasingly dystopian world politics.
Past Events
'Navigating Trump 2.0: A Pop-Culture Guide to the Rise of American Fascism from Sinclair Lewis to the Late-Night Deathwatch', British International Studies Association Conference, Europa Hotel, Belfast, Northern Ireland (19 June 2025)
“"A Bullet for the Cause?" The Irish Language, Identity Politics, and Intergenerational Trauma in Kneecap (2024)' with Cahir O’Doherty, British International Studies Association Conference, Europa Hotel, Belfast, Northern Ireland (20 June 2025)
'England’s First and Last Colony: A Postcolonial Wales?' with Haro Karkour, British International Studies Association Conference, Europa Hotel, Belfast, Northern Ireland (20 June 2025)
'Roundtable: Geographies of Media and Popular Culture in the New Age of Anxiety' - Organiser and Chair, American Association of Geographers annual meeting, Detroit, Michigan (25 March 2025)
'A Marvel to Behold or For-Profit Pandering? Disney’s Embrace of Indigenous Recognition, Resistance, and Survivance', 15th Popular Culture and World Politics Conference (PCWP v15), Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (22 November 2024)
'"Do You See What I See?" Visions of the Anthropocene in Serial TV Drama', European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS), WS31: Popular Culture and the End of the World: Imagining Dystopia and Utopia in the Anthropocene Epoch at Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Türkiye (5 July 2024)
'Terra Nullius No More! Finland in Geopolitical Imagination after NATO', hosted by the Global Politics and Practice Research Group at Central European University, Vienna, Austria (21 November 2023)
'Geographical Imagination, Genealogy, and Geopolitics in Who Do You Think You Are? ' at the (Em)placing the Popular in Cultural Geography workshop at Coventry University, UK (12 January 2022)
'(Be)longing to/for the Past: Negotiations of Time, Space, and Identity in Beforeigners ', In/between Spaces of Power - SF Geographies of Bodies in Troubled Times at the Swiss Geoscience Meeting (SGM), University of Geneva, Switzerland (20 November 2021)
'IR in Ruins: Imagining Global Power in the Coming Apocalypse', Cosmologies of the End workshop at the 7th European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS), University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece (2 July 2021)
'A Critical Analysis of the Political Geographies of Black Panther', invited keynote at Headington College and Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability workshop, University of Oklahoma (March 26, 2019)
'Extending the Katechon: Religio-Civilizational Vectors in Russia’s Intervention in the Levant', Striking from the Margins Conference: State, Disintegration and Devolution of Authority in the Arab Middle East , American University of Beirut, Lebanon (January 17, 2019)
'Who Gets to Imagine the Community in Cyberspace? A Reflection on the Past(s), Present, and Future(s) of Digital Nationalism' at the Nations in Cyberspace conference, hosted by the Nationalism Studies Program, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary (June 28, 2018)
'#Geopolitics: Diplomacy in the Age of Twitter', School of International Relations at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia (April 27, 2018)
“"A Bullet for the Cause?" The Irish Language, Identity Politics, and Intergenerational Trauma in Kneecap (2024)' with Cahir O’Doherty, British International Studies Association Conference, Europa Hotel, Belfast, Northern Ireland (20 June 2025)
'England’s First and Last Colony: A Postcolonial Wales?' with Haro Karkour, British International Studies Association Conference, Europa Hotel, Belfast, Northern Ireland (20 June 2025)
'Roundtable: Geographies of Media and Popular Culture in the New Age of Anxiety' - Organiser and Chair, American Association of Geographers annual meeting, Detroit, Michigan (25 March 2025)
'A Marvel to Behold or For-Profit Pandering? Disney’s Embrace of Indigenous Recognition, Resistance, and Survivance', 15th Popular Culture and World Politics Conference (PCWP v15), Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (22 November 2024)
'"Do You See What I See?" Visions of the Anthropocene in Serial TV Drama', European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS), WS31: Popular Culture and the End of the World: Imagining Dystopia and Utopia in the Anthropocene Epoch at Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Türkiye (5 July 2024)
'Terra Nullius No More! Finland in Geopolitical Imagination after NATO', hosted by the Global Politics and Practice Research Group at Central European University, Vienna, Austria (21 November 2023)
'Geographical Imagination, Genealogy, and Geopolitics in Who Do You Think You Are? ' at the (Em)placing the Popular in Cultural Geography workshop at Coventry University, UK (12 January 2022)
'(Be)longing to/for the Past: Negotiations of Time, Space, and Identity in Beforeigners ', In/between Spaces of Power - SF Geographies of Bodies in Troubled Times at the Swiss Geoscience Meeting (SGM), University of Geneva, Switzerland (20 November 2021)
'IR in Ruins: Imagining Global Power in the Coming Apocalypse', Cosmologies of the End workshop at the 7th European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS), University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece (2 July 2021)
'A Critical Analysis of the Political Geographies of Black Panther', invited keynote at Headington College and Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability workshop, University of Oklahoma (March 26, 2019)
'Extending the Katechon: Religio-Civilizational Vectors in Russia’s Intervention in the Levant', Striking from the Margins Conference: State, Disintegration and Devolution of Authority in the Arab Middle East , American University of Beirut, Lebanon (January 17, 2019)
'Who Gets to Imagine the Community in Cyberspace? A Reflection on the Past(s), Present, and Future(s) of Digital Nationalism' at the Nations in Cyberspace conference, hosted by the Nationalism Studies Program, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary (June 28, 2018)
'#Geopolitics: Diplomacy in the Age of Twitter', School of International Relations at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia (April 27, 2018)