'Clap for Carers' is to return on Thursday under a new name of 'Clap for Heroes' and I feel compelled to say something. For ten weeks in a row during the first wave, every Thursday at 8 pm, here in the UK we would be called to action. Television shows would be paused as we were instructed to ‘clap for our carers.’ Every week, we were told t... Read this >>
Profile: Kandida Purnell - Assistant Professor of International Relations
Dr Kandida Purnell is an international political theorist and critical security studies expert with nine years of in-class and online University teaching experience in the English, Scottish, and US systems. Currently working as Assistant Professor of International Relations at Richmond, The American International University in London, Kandida has previously fulfilled the roles of Lecturer in International Relations (Security) at City, University of London and Teaching Fellow in Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen.
Due for publication in Spring 2021 with Routledge’s Interventions series, Kandida’s monograph Rethinking the Body in Global Politics follows recent publications on the body politics and (in)securities of the COVID-19 pandemic, hunger strike, war commemoration, war performance, and museumification. As is a regular commentator at blogs including Duck of Minerva, The Disorder of Things, and Somatosphere, Kandida is also continuing to collaborate with Drs Natasha Danilova and Emma Dolan on the Carnegie-funded ‘War Commemoration, Military Culture, and Identity Politics in Scotland’ project while solo research into ‘Feeling COVID-19’ and ‘Bringing Bodies Back: Repatriation and War Performance within Forever War’ is ongoing.
Kandida Purnell's COVID-19 Diary
06 Jan 2021 : To clap or not to clap..
Kandida Purnell, Assistant Professor of International Relations
11 Nov 2020 : Losing count, losing touch: on feeling/not feeling the 2nd wave
It is November and in Europe the 2nd wave is upon us, but not all of us. In fact, today it is predicted that where I live in the UK the official COVID-19 death toll will surpass 50,000 and yet I still (thankfully/*touches wood*) know no-one who has died 'with COVID-19'. Do you? Over the course of this year I have come to realise that my experience of the ... Read this >>
Kandida Purnell, Assistant Professor of International Relations
19 Jul 2020 : On numbers and numbness
I have been wanting to say something about COVID-19 body counting for a while but this post has remained in my 'drafts' for months and therefore contains reflections dating back to early May. However, events in England over the past few days have pushed me to press 'publish'. It is 5th May 2020 and the UK’s official (Government compiled) COVID-19 d... Read this >>
Kandida Purnell, Assistant Professor of International Relations
26 May 2020 : Weekend, Interrupted
It is Tuesday. I should maybe be feeling refreshed but the UK's three day Spring 'bank holiday' weekend that just past was hijacked by a news story which became quite engrossing. The story 'broke' on Friday and is about a 500 mile round trip from London to Durham and back made by Number 10 Special Advisor Dominic Cummings during the British 'lockdown'. Th... Read this >>
Kandida Purnell, Assistant Professor of International Relations
03 May 2020 : 'Calm the fuck down'
Walking around the place I live (a commuter town in Surrey, England) I'm being laughed at and told to 'calm the fuck down' (amongst other things) for expecting and asking people to social distance. Confrontations are happening on a more than daily basis - because I won’t let people invade my 2 meter protective space without a fight - and it's wearin... Read this >>
Kandida Purnell, Assistant Professor of International Relations
29 Apr 2020 : From PhD to Pandemic
It's unusual I think, after re-locating for the PhD and then being on the academic job market for years - going from fixed-term contract to fixed-term contract and moving around accordingly - to then come home. Not by choice (you don’t get a choice, you apply everywhere and when you finally get an offer you accept it), but by chance. In September 20... Read this >>
Kandida Purnell, Assistant Professor of International Relations
28 Apr 2020 : On Dreams and/of Death
As my first contribution to the Covid-19 Health Diaries, I meant to post this yesterday (on Monday) but was too tired to.. Sleep is elusive and then strange in the time of Corona 'crisis'. This is something noticed by and motivating the University College London (UCL) based Lockdown Dreams project - the aim of which is to collect up and psychoanaly... Read this >>