Dr Joanna Tidy
Department of Politics and International Relations
Lecturer in Politics
+44 114 222 1691
Full contact details
Department of Politics and International Relations
2.04
Elmfield Building
Northumberland Road
Sheffield
S10 2TU
- Profile
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Dr Joanna Tidy is Lecturer in Politics. She was previously Anniversary Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2016-2018) within the Department and before that held positions in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol (UK), where she gained a Doctorate in Politics. She also holds an MSc in Social Science Research Methods, an MSc in International Relations and a LLB in Law.
Joanna’s research theorises the interrelation of war, gender, and military power and her work is at the intersections of critical and feminist international relations and interdisciplinary critical military studies. She is Encounters editor for the journal Critical Military Studies.
- Research interests
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My main focus at the moment is researching and writing a book on gender, war and the soldier beyond combat. Typically, the figure of the soldier and the interrelation of war, violence, and military and gendered power have been understood through the combat specialist.
We have tended to follow these ‘combat soldiers’ into war and have theorised through them, developing concepts such as military/ised masculinities. We haven’t tended to follow those soldiers that make up the majority of contemporary western militaries: drivers, administrators, engineers, those who work in human resources, logistics, and supply, and so on. Doing so is the task of this project, grounded in an analysis of the British army and its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Previously I have published in the following areas:
- Gender and anti-war politics in the US, including veterans’ anti-war politics, Chelsea Manning, and the Bergdahl case. I have particular interests in the politics of veteran authority and authenticity, and in the politics of motherhood and fatherhood in war and anti-war political subjectivity.
- War, visuality, experience and the politics of the Collateral Murder footage
- The conceptualisation of combat
- Militarism, memorialisation and conscience capitalism
Throughout my work I am particularly interested in questions of method and form.
- Publications
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Edited books
- Masculinities at the Margins: Beyond the Hegemonic in the Study of Militaries, Masculinities and War. Routledge.
Journal articles
- The intimate international relations of museums: a method. Millennium: Journal of International Studies. View this article in WRRO
- War Craft: The embodied politics of making war. Security Dialogue. View this article in WRRO
- Fatherhood, Gender, and Interventions in the Geopolitical: Analyzing Paternal Peace, Masculinities, and War. International Political Sociology, 12(1), 2-18. View this article in WRRO
- The Operation and Subversion of Gendered War Discourses: Soldierhood, motherhood and military dissent in the public production of Kimberly Rivera.. International Feminist Journal of Politics. View this article in WRRO
- Combat as a moving target: masculinities, the heroic soldier myth, and normative martial violence. Critical Military Studies, 3(2), 142-160. View this article in WRRO
- Visual regimes and the politics of war experience: Rewriting war ‘from above’ in WikiLeaks’ ‘Collateral Murder’. Review of International Studies, 43(1), 95-111. View this article in WRRO
- The Gender Politics of “Ground Truth” in the Military Dissent Movement: The Power and Limits of Authenticity Claims Regarding War. International Political Sociology, 10(2), 99-114. View this article in WRRO
- Forces Sauces and Eggs for Soldiers: food, nostalgia, and the rehabilitation of the British military. Critical Military Studies, 1(3), 220-232. View this article in WRRO
- Gender, Dissenting Subjectivity and the Contemporary Military Peace Movement inBody of War. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 17(3), 454-472.
- Gays, Gaze and Aunty Gok. Feminist Media Studies, 13(2), 177-191.
- The Social Construction of Identity: Israeli Foreign Policy and the 2006 War in Lebanon. Global Society, 26(4), 535-556.
- The Part Humour Plays in the Production of Military Violence. Global Society.
Chapters
- Combat as a moving target: masculinities, the heroic soldier myth, and normative martial violence, Masculinities at the Margins (pp. 44-62). Routledge
- Beyond the hegemonic in the study of militaries, masculinities, and war, Masculinities at the Margins (pp. 1-4). Routledge
- (Re)Producing an (Anti)Military Masculinity: Popular Culture Representations of Gender and Military Dissent in the Figure of Ron Kovic, The Palgrave International Handbook of Gender and the Military (pp. 509-523). Palgrave Macmillan UK
Other
- Beyond the hegemonic in the study of militaries, masculinities, and war. Critical Military Studies, 3(2), 99-102.
- Masculinities at the Margins: Beyond the Hegemonic in the Study of Militaries, Masculinities and War. Routledge.
- Research group
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I am always happy to hear from students planning to pursue doctoral research in areas including but not limited to:
- Critical/feminist IR and security
- Critical military studies
- Gender
- War
- Militaries
- Military power
- Teaching activities
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My approach to teaching is that it should be a lively, intellectual partnership between staff and students. To this end, firstly, I enjoy working with students to engage critically with the processes, assumptions and power underpinning academic knowledge and wider ‘common sense’ positions.
I encourage students to trace the logics that structure what we know about a topic and unpack the political investments they represent. Secondly, I facilitate students to become fluent in topics through active and participatory engagement.
I aim to build students’ skills and confidence as researchers, working with the principle that students should be active in applying theories and concepts and generating analyses throughout their degree.