UCL Department of Geography
Dr Alan Ingram
  
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Dr Alan Ingram

About

ingram.jpegI work on critical approaches to geopolitics and security, with reference to the following areas:

  • Experimental geopolitics and contemporary art practice
  • The geopolitics of global health
  • Post-Soviet Russian nationalism and and geopolitical theory


I currently hold a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for the project Art and War: Responses to Iraq, which explores the responses of artists and art spaces in the UK to the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation. You can read a blog on the project at http://www.responsestoiraq.wordpress.com and follow me on Twitter.

I co-edit a book series on Critical Geopolitics and am a board member of the journal Medicine Conflict and Survival. I am a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and served as Secretary of the RGS-IBG Political Geography Research Group from 2008-2011.

I welcome enquiries from potential graduate students interested in conducting research in political geography, geopolitics and related areas.

Contact details

Dr Alan Ingram, UCL Department of Geography, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom
Tel +44 (0)20 7679 7581   Fax +44 (0)20 7679 7565
a.ingram[at]ucl.ac.uk   UCL phone: 27581   Office: G15, 26 Bedford Way

Biography

2012- Senior Lecturer, UCL Department of Geography

2004-2012 Lecturer, UCL Department of Geography

2002-2004 Policy Officer and manager of the UK Global Health Programme, The Nuffield Trust

1999-2001 Joint Assistant Lecturer, Department of Geography and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge

1999 Research Associate, Post-Soviet States Research Programme, University of Cambridge

1998-1999 Occasional teacher, Department of Geography, LSE

1997-1999 Associate Lecturer, Anglia Polytechnic University

 

1998 PhD in Geography, University of Cambridge

1996 MA in Geography, University of Cambridge

1993 BA Hons Geography, University of Cambridge

Teaching

I am on sabbatical leave until January 2013

Undergraduate

Graduate

 

Research Interests

Experimental geopolitics and contemporary art practice

This area of work forms the main current focus for my research and grows out of an interest in the manner in which geopolitics is encountered, negotiated and contested in everyday life and in cultural production. I am interested in the following sets of questions:

1. How are contemporary artists and curators addressing geopolitical issues? My research engages with the work of artists who have, for example, produced alternative mappings of contemporary geopolitical conflicts, conducted international border crossings as art works, and set up live art installations to explore the blurred boundaries between video games and remote control war. It also examines exhibitions that have sought to stage geopolitics, for example by simulating surveillance and security practices and imagining how the Iraq war might in future be commemorated.

2. How do artistic and curatorial practices participate in the political, cultural and material construction of space? My work examines how the techniques of painting, photomontage, installation and performance and particular curatorial strategies create spaces of representation, embodiment and experience that intersect with the constitution of public space and global political order.

3. How can we theorize the implications of these practices for geopolitics? Here my work focuses on elaborating the connections between what I term the experimental geopolitics found in contemporary art practice and efforts to develop alternative modes of geopolitical intervention, for example in peace work and other kinds of activism. I identify such connections in concerns with embodiment, with technology and in questions of visibility. I am interested in how an engagement with the experimental sensibility evident in contemporary art can provide a means to enrich and reflect critically upon alternative geopolitical practices.

4. What are the implications of artistic and curatorial interventions in geopolitics for broader public understanding and engagement in issues of war and peace? I am particularly interested in art works and interventions that involve participants and record the manner of their participation. Here my research explores how artistic interventions may elicit and prompt reflection on the complex issues surrounding contemporary conflicts. My research also considers the ways in which art may participate in broader public debates around war and peace, for example in relation to anti-war activism, the effects of violence and practices of memorialization.

This research agenda is the focus on a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for the academic year 2011-2012, awarded for the project Art and War: Responses to Iraq, which considers how artists and art spaces in the UK have responded to the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation. The project encompasses archival research on art works and exhibitions, interviewing of artists and curators and public engagement activities.

The geopolitics of global health

From 2002 to 2004 I worked outside academia, managing a policy research and development programme at the Nuffield Trust exploring the emerging interface between global health, foreign policy and security. This formed the focus of my research on joining UCL in 2004. Here I have researched what is often called the securitization of global health, or the move to conceptualize and manage global health issues in terms of security. This work explores the shift towards framing and managing global health issues such as HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases as matters of security and the implications of renewed interest among military and security agencies in global health. Drawing on governmentality and political-economic approaches, my work seeks to clarify the geopolitical stakes and dimensions of global health, arguing that these pervade contemporary global health initiatives but also work their way through the politics of national health. My recent work considers the implications of the global financial crisis for global health and the process of rationalization under way in the international response to HIV/AIDS.

Russian nationalism and geopolitical theory

My graduate and post-doctoral research examined the implications of Russian nationalism for the geopolitics of the post-Soviet states. Following the collapse of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and amid concerns about the stability of the region, my research examined the claims, strategies and dynamics of a resurgent Russian nationalism and its relationship to post-Soviet state building. The research highlighted the radical implications of Russian nationalism and the manner in which nationalist intellectuals were drawing on classical Western theories of geopolitics, but also identified factors limiting the prospects for Russian nationalism to precipitate wider instability in the post-Soviet region.

Publications

Book

Ingram A Dodds K eds (2009) Spaces of Security and Insecurity: Geographies of the War on Terror Farnham: Ashgate link to publisher here

Experimental geopolitics and contemporary art practice

Ingram A (2013) Artists in Dodds K Kuus M Sharp J Critical Geopolitics Research Companion Farnham: Ashgate

Ingram A (2012) Art and the Iraq war: visibility, materiality and the politics of space (catalogue essay for Iraq: How, Where, for Whom: Hanaa Malallah and kennardphillipps) London: Mosaic Rooms link to exhibition page

Ingram A (2012) Bringing war home: from Baghdad, 5 March 2007 to London, 9 September 2010 Political Geography 31:2 61-63

Ingram A (2011) Experimental geopolitics: Wafa Bilal's Domestic Tension Geographical Journal 178:2 123-133

Ingram A (2011) Making geopolitics otherwise: artistic interventions in global political space Geographical Journal 177:3 218-222

Ingram A (2010) Refamiliarizing the war on terror in Kluijver R ed Borders: Contemporary Middle Eastern Art and Discourse The Hague: Gemak 41

Ingram A (2009) Art and the geopolitical: remapping security at Green Zone/Red Zone in Ingram A Dodds K Spaces of Security and Insecurity: Geographies of the War on Terror Farnham: Ashgate 257-277

The geopolitics of global health

Ingram A (2013) Viral geopolitics: biosecurity and global health governance in Dobson A Barker K Taylor S eds Biosecurity: The Socio-Politics of Invasive Species and Infectious Diseases. London: Earthscan/Routledge.

Ingram A (2012) After the exception: HIV/AIDS beyond salvation and scarcity Antipode DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01008.x

Brown T Craddock S Ingram A (2012) Critical interventions in global health: governmentality, risk, assemblage Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102:5 1182-1189

Ingram A (2011) The Pentagon's HIV/AIDS programmes: governmentality, political economy, security Geopolitics 16:3 655-674

Ingram A (2010) Governmentality and security in the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Geoforum 41:4 607-616

Ingram A (2010) Biosecurity and the international response to HIV/AIDS Area 42:3 293-301

Ingram A (2009) The geopolitics of disease Geography Compass 3:6 2084-2097

Ingram A (2009) The international political economy of global responses to HIV/AIDS in Kay A Williams O eds The Crisis of Global Health Governance: Challenges: Institutions and Political Economy Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan

Ingram A (2008) Domopolitics and disease: HIV/AIDS, immigration and asylum in the UK Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26:5 875-894

Ingram A (2008) Pandemic anxiety and global health security in Pain R Smith S eds Fear: Critical Geopolitics and Everyday Life Aldershot: Ashgate 75-85

Ingram A (2007) HIV/AIDS, security and the geopolitics of US-Nigerian relations Review of International Political Economy 14:3 510-534

Lee K Ingram A Lock K McInnes C (2007) Bridging health and foreign policy: the role of health impact assessments Bulletin of the World Health Organisation 85:3 207-2011

Coker R Ingram A (2006) Passports and pestilence: migration, security and contemporary border control of infectious diseases in Bashford A ed Medicine at the Border: Disease, Globalization and Security, 1850 to the Present London: Palgrave 159-176

Ingram A (2005) The new geopolitics of disease: between global health and global security Geopolitics 10:3 522-545

Ingram A (2005) Global leadership and global health: contending meta-narratives, divergent responses, fatal consequences International Relations 19:4 381-402

Zwi A Owen JW Ingram A (2004) Health and foreign policy: moving forward with greater focus Medical Journal of Australia 180:4 152-153

Russian nationalism and geopolitical theory

Ingram A (2001) Alexander Dugin: geopolitics and neo-fascism in post-Soviet Russia Political Geography 20:8 1029-1051

Ingram A (2001) Broadening Russia's borders? The nationalist challenge of the Congress of Russian Communities Political Geography 20:2 197-219

Ingram A (1999) 'A nation split into fragments': the Congress of Russian Communities and Russian nationalist ideology Europe-Asia Studies 51:4 687-704