Dr Alan Ingram
Associate Professor
Academic support and feedback: online - check email for details
a.ingram[at]ucl.ac.uk
New book out now - links to publisher page here and blog post here.
Reviews
'Geopolitics and the Event is an enthralling survey of the response to the Iraq war both by Iraqi and non-Iraqi visual artists that is brimming with insight on every page. I have no doubt this book will become an essential reference for anyone researching or thinking about the catastrophe of the Iraq War and the sanction years.'
Hassan Abdulrazzak, Iraqi-British playwright
'In this timely and thought-provoking book, Alan Ingram asks us to consider how Britain's war in Iraq has been encountered, appropriated and reworked through art works, by artists and through exhibition practices. Geopolitics and the Event offers us a systematic exploration of how artistic enactments challenge the dominant logics of the Iraq war, and prompts us to rethink this significant geopolitical event.'
Rachel Woodward, Professor of Human Geography, Newcastle University
Research
I work in political geography, with reference to three overlapping areas of interest: geopolitics, biopolitics and aesthetics. My current research builds on my work on artistic responses to Britain's Iraq wars to examine public geopolitical practices more broadly.
Aesthetics
My recent research looks at how geopolitical events are encountered, negotiated and contested through art. Focusing particularly on artistic responses to the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, my work explores how artists experience and respond to geopolitical events and how artworks are used, exhibited and discussed in the context of broader debates about aesthetics, politics and space. This work has been developed through a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship awarded to research artistic responses to the Iraq war in Britain. There is a blog on this project at http://www.responsestoiraq.wordpress.com and a website for the exhibition based on my research can be found at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/iraq-war-geographies.
Biopolitics
My research since joining UCL has also explored what is often called the securitisation of global health. 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 ideas of biopolitics and governmentality as well as political-economic approaches, my work has explored 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.
Geopolitics
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
Books
Ingram A (2019) Geopolitics and the Event: Rethinking Britain's Iraq War through Art Oxford: Wiley RGS-IBG Book Series
Ingram A and Dodds K eds (2009) Spaces of Security and Insecurity: Geographies of the War on Terror Farnham: Ashgate
Articles and chapters
Geopolitics
Ingram A (2019) Thinking security through the event: materiality, politics and publicity in the Litvinenko affair Security Dialogue 50:2 165-180
Steinberg P Page S Dittmer J Gökariksel B Smith S Ingram A Koch N (2018) Reassessing the Trump Presidency, one year on Political Geography 62: 207-215
Ingram A (2017) Geopolitical events and fascist machines: Trump, Brexit and the deterritorialisation of the West Political Geography 57: 91-93
Ingram A (2001) Alexander Dugin: geopolitics and neo-fascism in post-Soviet Russia Political Geography 20:8 1029-1051. Translated into Russian by Anton Shekhovtsov as Алан Ингрэм (2011) Александр Дугин: геополитика и неофашизм в постсоветской России Форум новейшей восточноевропейской истории и культуры 2-С: 7-33
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
Biopolitics
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 (2013) After the exception: HIV/AIDS beyond salvation and scarcity Antipode 45:2 436-454
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
Aesthetics
Ingram A (2016) Art, geopolitics and metapolitics at Tate Galleries London Geopolitics 22:3 719-739
Ingram A Forsyth I Gauld N (2016) Beyond geopower: earthly and anthropic geopolitics in The Great Game by War Boutique Cultural Geographies 23:4 635-652
Ingram A (2016) Rethinking art and geopolitics through aesthetics: artist responses to the Iraq war Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 41:1 1-13
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 (2012) Experimental geopolitics: Wafaa 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
Impact
In March 2013 I curated the exhibition Geographies of War: Iraq Revisited, which explored how artists from Iraq and Britain responded to the war by engaging with questions of space, place, landscape, home and territory. The exhibition was accompanied by artists' talks and public engagement workshops exploring different experiences of the war and responses to it, organised in collaboration with the Mosaic Rooms, Ark Artist Space and Reel Festivals and supported by a UCL Public Engagement Beacon Bursary. The exhibition was reviewed in Trebuchet Magazine.
In the period surrounding tenth anniversary of the invasion I also took part in public panels discussing art and culture in relation to the war (Reel Iraq 2013). Further public events included a 2014 panel on Threads of Light/Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here at the Mosaic Rooms and an evening of Iraqi poetry and theatre at UCL as part of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition, also in 2014.
Teaching
PhD Students
Current
Catriona Gold. Epidemic governance in the post-colonial era: the political history of travel advisories from 1914-2016. Funded by ESRC 1+3 studentship. 2016-present.
Lioba Hirsch. Quarantine: lived experiences of disease, spatial exclusion and embodiment in West Africa. Funded by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung PhD Scholarship. 2015-present.
Completed
Charlotte Whelan. Experimental art practices and alternative political spaces in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Funded by ESRC +3 studentship. PhD awarded 2017.
Ophélie Véron. Deconstructing the divided city: identity, power and space in Skopje. Co-supervision with Dr Ger Duijzings, SEES. PhD awarded 2015.
Sam Halvorsen. Subverting space: territorial practices and territoriality in the Occupy London movement. Funded by ESRC +3 studentship. PhD awarded 2015. Currently Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge.
Cinzia Polese. Negotiating power between civil society and the state: the formulation of asylum policies in Italy and the United Kingdom. Funded by ESRC studentship. PhD awarded 2013.
Nick Megoran. The Borders of Eternal Friendship? The politics and pain of nationalism and identity along the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Ferghana Valley boundary 1999-2000. Funded by ESRC studentship. PhD awarded 2002. Currently Reader in Political Geography, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University.
Biography
Career history
2012-present Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor, 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
Degrees
1998 PhD in Geography, University of Cambridge
1996 MA in Geography, University of Cambridge
1993 BA Hons Geography, University of Cambridge
Editorial
Medicine, Conflict and Survival Co-Editor (2009-2012), Member of editorial board (2012-present)
Ashgate Critical Geopolitics Book Series, Co-Editor (2009-2015)
Professional associations and networks
AHRC Art and Conflict Research Network (2013-2014)
Diplomatic Cultures. AHRC Research Network. Member of Advisory Board. (2012-2013)
War and Media Network (2012-present)
Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), Fellow
Association of American Geographers, Reciprocal Member
Political Geography Research Group, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Secretary (2008-2011), Ordinary Member
