Dr Jenn Hobbs

I joined the School of History, Politics and International Relations in September 2022 as a Lecturer in International Relations. Prior to this, I worked as a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester, where I was co-director of the MA in International Relations. I completed my PhD in Global Politics at the University of Manchester in 2020.

My research conjoins feminist technoscience studies with a focus on biomedicine, security, health, and the politics of identity. I’m interested in thinking about the ways in which security governance operates through biomedical interventions, and how these interactions (re)produce bodies in particularly gendered, sexualised, and racialised ways. My research asks how and why security policy is interested in managing people’s bodies – and what happens to power relations when it does this?

My PhD research, entitled ‘Bodily Fluids in International Politics’, focused argued that gendered/sexed/racialised systems of power are produced and challenge in everyday and mundane forms of security governance. The thesis explored the role of bodily fluids in three three empirical case studies; plasma donation at the U.S.-Mexico border, airport health checks during the 2013-16 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and the treatment of U.S. service members with genitourinary injuries. The thesis argued that bodily fluids are an important object of governance in international security, as the regulation of fluids is one of the ways in which security actors attempt to control the relationships and connections formed between bodies.

My current research project on ‘Conceptualising health’ attempts to integrate insights from queer, feminist, and disability studies literature to argue that ‘health’ is best understood as something that emerges through bodily relationships; as such, we need to interrogate the zero-sum logics of health governance which often deprive some populations of health in order to enhance the health of others. I am interested particularly in how this continues to play out in the governance of COVID-19.

Beyond this, I am broadly interested in queer and feminist theories of international politics, and issues surrounding global health.

I am interested in supervising PhD topics on;

• Gender and sexuality in international politics
• Feminist security studies
• Biopolitics
• Global health

I am currently involved in teaching on the following modules;

• PL1015 The Global Politics of the Cold War (Y1)
• PL1022 Key Concepts in International Politics (Y1)
• PL2029 The Politics of the Global South (Y2)
• PL2019 Foreign Policy Analysis (Y2)
• PL3060 Feminism (Y3)

I am also involved in teaching on the following PGT and distance-learning (DL) modules;

• PL7089 The Politics of Human Rights
• PL7589 Politics of Human Rights (DL)

I am happy to share expertise on the following topics;

• Healthcare inequalities
• Infectious disease and racism
• LGBT and queer politics

2022

European International Studies Association Pan-European Conference, 1-4 September, Athens
Roundtable: ‘Eating the Patriarchy: Appetites, Anxieties and Armageddon in Jurassic World’

British International Studies Association Conference, 14-17 June, Newcastle
Paper: ‘Health Governance as Violence: Capacity and Debility in the face of COVID-19’

2019

British International Studies Association Conference, London
Paper: ‘Transplanting heteromasculinity: genitourinary injuries in the U.S. military’
Innovative session: ‘Art as Pedagogy and Methodology in International Politics’

European International Studies Association Pan-European Conference, Sofia
Paper: ‘Queerfeminist failure: contingent knowledges, bodies and failure as method in international politics’

2018

International Studies Association Annual Convention, San Francisco
Paper: ‘Vomiting Bodies: Ebola, Surveillance and (in)Security’

British International Studies Association Conference, Bath
Roundtable: ‘(Un)realistic research expectations and the ‘superstar’ academic’.