Dr Natalie James awarded ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship

We’re pleased to share that Dr Natalie James, was successful in securing an ESRC WRDTP Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Leeds, which will begin in October.

The ESRC WRDTP Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme allows researchers in the immediate postdoctoral stage of their career to consolidate their PhD by developing publications, networks, research and professional skills. The scheme welcomes proposals from a range of disciplines and can include single disciplines or multiple disciplines, providing at least 50% is within the social sciences.

Dr Natalie James

Dr Natalie James, who will be based in the School of Politics and International Studies, where she also completed her PhD last year, commented:

I’m thrilled to be commencing the Postdoctoral Fellowship in October in my PhD home department, POLIS. My PhD produced a wealth of data that I’m itching to share and the award will enable me to do just that – producing world-class publications at a world-leading institution. These publications will help bring my findings – and passion - to life, contributing to vitally important academic debates on how we construct threat in our everyday spaces and how we therefore go about trying to prevent it.

The outputs will be utilised to bring ground-level experiences to the forefront of discussion, improving policy, increasing knowledge and having real-world impact. It’s also brilliant to be coming ‘home’, surrounded by inspiring and supportive colleagues. The Fellowship is a really exciting opportunity to help me build my academic portfolio helping me work towards securing a permanent academic position upon its completion.

Natalie’s research focuses on discursive threat construction through counter-terrorism and extremism policy, specifically she focuses on how this emerges through the implementation of the Prevent duty within Greater Manchester’s Further Education Sector and will be supervised by Dr Jack Holland, Associate Professor in International Relations and Security.

Dr Jack Holland commented:

Natalie’s project is timely and important. The postdoctoral fellowship will enable her to disseminate an exceptionally rich dataset on UK counter-terrorism efforts in Further Education. These findings can help to improve UK policy, impacting key stakeholders.