Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Madeleine Fagan

BA (London), MSc (London), MSc (Aberystwyth), PhD (Aberystwyth), FHEA

fagan

Contact details

Email: M dot Fagan at Warwick dot ac dot uk

Tel: +44 (0)24765 23720

Office: E1.06 Social Science

Advice and Feedback hours:

Monday 14.00-15.00, Wednesday 12.00-13.00 (online/in person) during terms 1 and 2, and weeks 1-4 of term 3.

Postal address: PAIS, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL

Profile

Dr Madeleine Fagan is an Associate Professor in the department of Politics and International Studies at at the University of Warwick. Her current research explores political mobilisation around the Anthropocene and the ecological crisis. From 2020-2022 she held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for the project 'Contending Cultures of the Anthropocene: Prospects for Political Mobilization' (RF-2019-356\7).

Madeleine's work investigates the implications for political mobilization of contending representations of the Anthropocene across academic disciplines, popular culture and media reporting, and scientific, artistic and cultural production. She is interested in the implications of different ways of conceptualising the human/nature distinction, temporality, subjectivity and spatial imaginations found in these accounts for possibilities of mobilisation. Initial outputs from this research appear in International Political Sociology (2023), Political Geography (2019), European Journal of International Relations (2016) and the British Journal of Politics and International Relations (2017) (see below for details).

Her ESRC-funded PhD thesis explored the implications of prominent critical, interpretive, and non-foundational normative theories for rethinking political action. The monograph based on this research, Ethics and Politics After Poststructuralism: Levinas, Derrida, Nancy, is published with Edinburgh University Press (2013, 2016).

She holds a BA in War Studies from King’s College, London, an MSc in International Relations from The London School of Economics, an MSc in Postcolonial Politics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and a PhD in International Politics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

She took up the post of Assistant Professor in PAIS in October 2016. Previously she held a Global Research Fellowship in the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick (2012-2016), and posts in the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick (2011-2012), and the Department of Politics, University of Exeter (2009-2011).


Research Interests

I welcome applications for PhD supervision in any of the following areas:

Ecological Security, the Anthropocene and critical environmental politics; the Anthropocene, security and climate change; political mobilization around the environment; the politics of nature, time and subjectivity; ecological security; disastrous, catastrophic and apocalyptic visions of environmental futures.

Critical, Normative, and Interpretive Social and Philosophical thought; Poststructuralist philosophy; the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy; theories of responsibility and ethics; relational ontologies; theories of time and temporality; theories of subjecticity, identity and political community.

Theories of International Relations, ethics, and global security; Critical, Poststructuralist and post-foundational approaches to global politics; International Political Theory; Contemporary political theory; discourse analysis and critical methodologies; the political implications of ethical theories; aesthetic and everyday approaches to ethics; ethical narratives in film, literature and popular culture.


Publications

Books

  • Ethics and Politics after Poststructuralism: Levinas, Derrida, Nancy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013, 2016). 'Taking on the Political' series.
    • Reviewed in Contemporary Political Theory (2015)
    • Reviewed in Political Studies Review (2016)
      • "An excellent book … makes a significant original argument” Professor Maja Zehfuss, University of Manchester.
      • “Fagan’s imaginative inversion of poststructuralist ethics ... an interesting and provocative book’ Dr Vassilios Paipais, University of St Andrews.
      • “Fagan offers an impressively sophisticated examination of poststructuralist theory and develops an important critique of contemporary ethical thinking” Professor James Martin, Goldsmiths, University of London.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Book Chapters

  • (2023) M. Fagan 'The Paradox of Anthropocene Inaction: Knowledge Production, Mobilization and the Securitization of Social Relations' in Closs Stephens, A and Tazzioli, M. Emerging Political Spaces: Migration, Affect and Collective Movements (London: Routledge)
  • Forthcoming 2023 M. Fagan 'The Anthropocene Crisis as Ordering Practice: Knowledge Production and the Circulation of Security' in Hellmann, G and Jacobi, D. Rethinking Global Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

  • (2022) M. Fagan 'Environment' in Guillaume, X. and Grayson, K (eds) Security Studies: Critical Questions (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
  • (2020) M. Fagan 'Security for a Fragmented World: Ecology and the Challenge of the Anthropocene' in Chandler, D, Grove, K and Wakefield, S (eds) Resilience in the Anthropocene: Governance and Politics at the End of the World (London: Routledge).
  • (2008) M. Fagan, ‘The Ontopolitics of Response: Difference, Alterity and the Face’ in Terrorism and the Politics of Response (London and New York: Routledge, 2008).
  • (2007) M. Fagan and M. Suetsugu, ‘Conclusions: The Im/Possibility of Closure’, in Derrida: Negotiating the Legacy, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007).

Research funding

  • Leverhulme Research Fellowship, 'Contending Cultures of the Anthropocene: Prospects for Political Mobilization', 2020-2022 (RF-2019-356\7).
  • Global Research Fellowship, Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick, 2012-2016.
  • British Academy Overseas Conference Grant, 2011.
  • ESRC 1+3 Doctoral Studentship, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, 2005-2009.