Dr Alan Ingram

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.

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

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.

Undergraduate

GEOG0015 Global Events

GEOG0025 Political Geography and Geopolitics

GEOG0056 Geopolitical Events

Postgraduate

GEOGG086 Advanced Geopolitics

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.

Completed

Lioba Hirsch. Quarantine: lived experiences of disease, spatial exclusion and embodiment in West Africa. Funded by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung PhD Scholarship and a UCL Graduate Research Scholarship for Cross-Disciplinary Training. PhD awarded 2020.

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.

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.

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

1993 BA (Hons.) in 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