27 March 2019

From 28 February to 1 March, the Remote Warfare Programme held a two day conference entitled ‘Conceptualising Remote Warfare: The Past, Present and Future’. Sponsored by the British International Studies Association, the conference brought together a wide range of experts from the military, academia, civil society and parliament and explored the many aspects of remote warfare. 

Chaired by Dr. Jack Watling, this panel discusses the cost and consequences of remote warfare.

Track 1

Introduction

Abigail Watson, Megan Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen and Jack Watling 



Track 2

Intelligence-sharing in Remote Warfare

Professor Julian Richards, BUCSIS and the University of Buckinghamshire



Track 3

Remote Warfare: The Socio-Political Effects of Ever Present/Absent War

Dr Norma Rossi and Dr Malte Riemann, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst



Track 4

The Strategic Logic of Remote Counterinsurgency: From Vietnam to the War on Terror

Emil Archambault, University of Durham



Track 5

Non-Western Experiences of Remote Warfare: Stories from Yemen

Baraa Shiban and Camilla Molyneux, Reprieve and APPG on Drones


Image credit: DVIDSHUB/Flickr.

About the speakers

Professor Julian Richards spent nearly twenty years working for the British government in intelligence and security policy, before co-founding the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS) at the University of Buckingham. His research interests include intelligence machinery and governance; and counter-terrorism policy in a range of regional and global contexts. 

Dr Norma Rossi is a Senior Lecturer in Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst. She holds a PhD from the University of Reading on an Earhart Foundation fellowship. Dr Rossi’s research interests are in critical security studies. She has taught about and researched different theoretical and empirical issues such as the relation between state-building processes and organise crime, the role of far-right parties in security discourses in Italy, the relationship between neoliberalism and the changing character of conflict and military subjectivity, and the role of Professional Military Education in Security Sector Reform.  

Malte Riemann is  senior lecturer in the Department of Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. His research interests lie at the crossroads of historical sociology, international relations theory, and the history of ideas. In particular he focuses on the historicity of international actors and how these are understood within and shaped by the international system. 
He is currently in the process of writing a monograph in German on the transformation of war provisionally titled “Krieg im 20ten und 21ten Jahrhundert”.  I am the series editor of the Sandhurst Trends in International Conflict series published by Howgate Publishing. 

Emil Archambault is a PhD Candidate at the School of Government and International Affairs at the University of Durham. His research concerns the evolution of conceptions of contemporary warfare, particularly as concerns the spatialisation of warfare. His research interests include theories of warfare, drone warfare, and spatialisations of war, as well as the political theory of Carl Schmitt and theories of International Relations.

Baraa Shiban is a Middle East and North Africa Caseworker at Reprieve. Prior to this role, Baraa was Reprieve’s Yemen Project Coordinator, investigating drone strikes across Yemen. Baraa also served as a youth representative in Yemen’s National Dialogue (a body charged with negotiating solutions to Yemen’s challenges and, where necessary, revising its laws).

Camilla Molyneux is a researcher with the APPG on Drones.