Academics
Daniel Conway
BA (Hons) Exeter, MSc (Bristol), PhD (Rhodes)
Lecturer in Politics |
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Biography
I joined the Department in 2007 from the Department of Politics, University of Bristol where I had been an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Post-Doctoral Fellow and Visiting Lecturer. I have a BA (Hons) in History and Politics from the University of Exeter and an MSc with Distinction in International Relations from the University of Bristol. I was awarded a PhD in Politics by Rhodes University, South Africa.
Research Interests
My general research interests are:
- South African politics and society
- Masculinities and international politics
- Gender studies and feminist politics
- Post-Colonial Politics and Development
- Sexuality and Queer Theory
- Popular Culture and Politics
- Militarisation
- Peace Movements
- Whiteness and Race Politics
- Political Sociology
Contesting the Masculine State: Masculinities, Militarisation and War Resistance in Apartheid South Africa
This project analyses competing discourses of masculinity and citizenship between South African white male political objectors to compulsory conscription, their supporters in the End Conscription Campaign (ECC) and the apartheid state. I am particularly interested in the intersections between gender, sexuality and militarisation and conceptualise military service and objection to it as performative acts generative of political subjectivities. I have a number of publications relating to this project culminating in a forthcoming monograph entitled Masculinities, Militarisation and the End Conscription Campaign: War Resistance in Apartheid South Africa for Manchester University Press and the University of the Witwatersrand Press. I explore heteronormative discourses of sexuality and race in a forthcoming article entitled ‘Queering Apartheid: The National Party’s 1987 ‘Gay Rights’ Election Campaign in Hillbrow’ which was published in December 2009 in the Journal of Southern African Studies. This article analyses the shifting conceptualisations of heteronormativity in late-apartheid white society, the collapse spatial management of race and the attempts by the apartheid regime to reorder whiteness and assimilate white gay men into the National Party’s constituency.
South African Migration to the UK and the British in South Africa
The second research theme develops my research from an historical period in South Africa to contemporary international understandings of gender, whiteness and citizenship. I have been awarded a British Academy Research Grant (in collaboration with Dr Pauline Leonard, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton) to study ‘The British in South Africa: Continuity or Change’. This research involves interviewing British-born expatriates in South Africa and will result in a joint authored monograph entitled Migration, Space and Transnational Identities: The British in South Africa published by Palgrave Macmillan.
My interest in whiteness as a sub-theme of racial studies has also been developed with Professor Melissa Steyn (University of Cape Town). We co-edited a special issue of the journal Ethnicities entitled ‘Intersecting Whiteness, Interdisciplinary Debates’ published in 2010.
Dress, Performativity and Politics/IR
The third research theme is in collaboration with Dr Jutta Weldes and focuses primarily on modes of dress and diplomacy as a form of ‘soft power’ with the empirical focus on Queen Elizabeth II’s evening gowns worn on state occasions, particularly on state visits. This research draws on a growing body of work in international relations, sociology, geography and fashion theory analysing dress, performativity, gendered embodiment and representations of nation. Dr Weldes and I are writing a paper entitled ‘Dressing up and Queening it’: Queen Elizabeth II, Dress and British Public Diplomacy‘. I am concurrently working on a single authored paper entitled ‘Margaret Thatcher, Dress and the Politics of Fashion’ which explores the strong and complex relationship Margaret Thatcher had with dress and appearance, the oft ignored relationship with women (notably her mother, personal assistant Cynthia Crawford and fashion adviser Margaret King) and the wider significance of dress, gendered embodiment and Britishness.
Teaching 2010-2011
First Year: Introduction to Democracy
Second Year: Issues in Political Sociology
Third Year: South African Politics and Society
Dissertation Module
Detailed searchable list of publications
Recent Publications
Book
(Forthcoming) Masculinities, Militarisation and the End Conscription Campaign: War Resistance in Apartheid South Africa (Manchester University Press and the University of the Witwatersrand Press).
Journal Articles
(2010) (with Melissa Steyn) ‘Introduction: Intersecting Whiteness: Interdisciplinary Debates’, Ethnicities, 10(3): 1-9.
(2009) ‘Queering Apartheid: The National Party’s 1987 ‘Gay Rights’ Election Campaign in Hillbrow’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 35(4): 849-863.
(2008) ‘Masculinities and Narrating the Past: Experiences of Researching White Men who Refused to Serve in the Apartheid Army’, Qualitative Research, 8(3), 347-354.
(2008) ‘The Masculine State in Crisis: State Response to War Resistance in Apartheid South Africa’, Men and Masculinities, 10(4): 422-439.
(2004) ‘Every Coward’s Choice’? Political Objection to Military Service in Apartheid South Africa as Sexual Citizenship’, Citizenship Studies, 8(1), pp. 25-45.
Book chapters
(2010) ‘Rejuvenating Whiteness: Race, Nation and Militarization in 1980s Apartheid South Africa’, in Cadinot, D., Prum, M. and Teule (eds) Guerre et Race dans L’aire Anglophone (Paris: L’Harmattan)
(2008) ‘Contesting the Masculine State: White Male War Resisters in Apartheid South Africa’, in Parpart, J and. Zalewski, M. (eds.) Rethinking the Man Question: Sex, Gender and Violence in International Relations (London: Zed Press).
(2008) ‘“Somewhere on the Border - Of Credibility”: The Cultural Construction and Contestation of ‘the Border’ in White Society’, in Baines, G. and Vale, P. (eds) Beyond the Border War: New Perspectives on Southern Africa’s Late Cold War Conflicts (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press).
(2006) ‘White Masculinities’, in Jones, A. (ed.) Men of the Global South: A Reader (London: Zed).
(2005) ‘Masculinity, Citizenship and Objection to Military Service in the South African Defence Force’ in Gouws, A. (ed.) (Un)Thinking Citizenship: Feminist Debates in Contemporary South Africa (Basingstoke and Cape Town: Ashgate and UCT Press).
(2002) with Roger Southall, ‘Africa in the International System’ in Nel, P. & McGowan, P. (eds.) Power, Wealth and Global Order: An International Relations Textbook in Africa (UCT Press: Cape Town).
Media
(26/7/10) ‘The Changing Lives of Expats in South Africa’, The Telegraph Weekly World Edition
(Posted 11/1/2007) ‘South Africa’, Roundtable Forum ‘Global Perspectives 2007’, International Affairs Forum, Center for International Relations. Click here for more information (24/8/2006)
‘This Modern Republic is not a ‘Boot Camp for Progressive Ideals’: Negative Analysis of South Africa Obscures the Country’s Dynamism’, The Guardian, London. Click here for more information.