Based on his forthcoming book Security as Politics, Neal will argue that ‘security’ was once an anti-political ‘exception’ in liberal democracies - a ‘black box’ of secret intelligence and military decision making at the dark heart of the state - but has now become a normal part of professional political life. Using archival research and interviews with politicians, the book investigates security politics in the UK from the 1980s to the present day to show how its meaning and practice have changed over time, offering a highly-original rethink of the security/politics relationship. Neal is currently extending this research to the Parliament of Australia and will reflect on his initial findings.

About the presenter:

Dr Andrew Neal is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh and Co-Director of the Centre for Security Research (CeSeR). He is the author of Security as Politics: Beyond the State of Exception (Edinburgh University Press 2019), Exceptionalism and the Politics of Counter-Terrorism (Routledge, 2010); editor of Security in a Small Nation: Scotland, Democracy, Politics (Open Book Publishers, 2017); and co-editor, with Jef Huysmans, Claudia Aradau and Nadine Voelkner, of Critical Security Methods (Routledge, 2014), amongst others. His articles have appeared in Security Dialogue, International Political Sociology, and Terrorism and Political Violence and elsewhere. His recent research has been on changes in parliamentary security politics and its implications for the conceptualisation of the security/politics relationship.