Strife

The Academic Blog of the Department of War Studies, King's College London

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Staff Writers

Prachi Aryal
Staff Writer

Prachi Aryal is a MA student in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.

Her research interest is inclined towards Gender, Human Rights, and Cross border conflicts in transitioning nations and how visuals from conflict zones play a role in communicating the realities of conflict to the broader world, impacting the global reaction to conflicts. She holds a degree in BA (Hons) Journalism from the University of Delhi, India.

She was a recipient of the University Medal for outstanding academic performance in her subject at the University.

James Brown
Staff Writer

James Brown is a PhD candidate in history at Northumbria University. His focus is on Soviet dissidents and their use in the politics and international relations of the Cold War. He previously studied at Glasgow University, doing a Master’s in East European, Russian, and Eurasian studies. During this time he studied Russian and wrote his thesis, ‘Returning to Machiavelli: Giving Belarus-Russia relations the Original Realist Treatment’, which received the prize for best dissertation from the Centre for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Glasgow.

At Northumbria, he is a member of several research groups, including the Conflict & Society and Histories of Activism groups. James also has a keen interest in literature, especially Czech writers, and had a poem on Jan Palach published in Edge Magazine. Additionally, he remains interested in the Chernobyl disaster, on which he wrote his undergraduate thesis, ‘A Long Half-Life: Responses to Chernobyl in Soviet and Post-Soviet Society’.

Jack Cross
Staff Writer

Jack is a postgraduate student within the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, having previously graduated with an undergraduate degree in history from the University of East Anglia.

His main research interests centre on diplomatic history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century concerning the decline of the Ottoman Empire, as well as current Turkish foreign policy and the Middle East more broadly.

Gideon Jones
Staff Writer

Gideon Jones is a MA student in Terrorism, Security & Society at the War Studies Department, King’s College London, and completed his BA in History at the University of Warwick.

Coming from Northern Ireland, he has been brought up in a country scarred by the issues of terrorism, conflict, sectarianism, and extremist ideology. Through this experience, he has been given valuable insight into how the legacies of such problems can continue to divide a society decades after the fighting has stopped, and how the issues left unresolved can threaten to upend a fragile peace.

Through his studies at the University of Warwick, he developed a strong interest in extremist ideology and radical thought. Through his final year dissertation, he used evolutionary psychology, sociology, and literary analysis to study the role that disgust played in the creation of reactionary and extremist thought in the French Revolution. Whilst studying at King’s, he hopes to pursue further research into the intersection of emotion and psychology and their influence on motivating extremist thought and action.

Hannah Papachristidis
Staff Writer

Hannah Papachristidis is a project officer at Transparency International Defence & Security, where she manages research outputs for the 2020 Government Defence Integrity Index.

She holds an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University and is an Emerging Expert at Forum on the Arms Trade.

Rafaela Piyioti
Staff Writer

Rafaela is a part-time MA student in the Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies programme at King’s College London. She received her BA in War Studies and Philosophy.

She is a Staff Writer for the Shield and writes for a Cypriot newspaper.

Currently, she is a Research Analyst for London Politica. Her main academic interest is on the role of intelligence in policymaking.

She also has a passion for Human Rights and has interned at the Cyprus Refugee Council. Rafaella enjoys traveling and learning about new cultures in her free time.

Carlotta Rinaudo
Staff Writer

Carlotta is a MA candidate in International Affairs at the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London.

After completing her BA in Interpreting and Translation, she moved to the Middle East and developed a strong interest in the MENA region, North Korea, Cybersecurity, and the implications of the rise of China.

Carlotta has written on a number of Italian publications on the Hong Kong protests and other forms of political unrest.

 

Owen P. Saunders
Staff Writer

Saunders is an MA Candidate at King’s College London, Department of War Studies, in International Peace and Security. He graduated his BA (Hons.) at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada in June of 2020. He previously held a position at the Royal Military College of Canada as a research assistant, while working on an undergraduate research fellowship on the topic of cyber electoral interference in the FVEY Alliance. He was able to present this research at SERENE-RISC Cybersecurity Network at the University of Ottawa, and have the work accepted to the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago, Illinois. Saunders is currently working toward the completion of his MA where he will continue to think critically about security implications and threats in a technologically evolving world. His aim is to examine security in a multifaceted and interdisciplinary way, gaining experience researching and writing about the evolution and mitigation of security threats both in Canada and the United Kingdom.