Dr Ian Shaw

- Lecturer in Human Geography (School of Geographical and Earth Sciences)
email: Ian.Shaw.2@glasgow.ac.uk
The Geopolitics of Drone Warfare
I am interested in the geopolitical transformations associated with the rise of drones in U.S. national security strategy and beyond. In particular, my approach emphasises why the drone is a political actor - a technology that is slowly but definitively changing social, territorial, and sovereign relations. In this sense, I think through the ways that drones are existential forces that shape our being-in-the-world.
- Ian Shaw and Majed Akhter (2012). 'The Unbearable Humanness of Drone Warfare in FATA, Pakistan'. Antipode, 44(4): 1490-1509.
- Ian Shaw 'Predator Empire: The Geopolitics of U.S. Drone Warfare', Geopolitics, forthcoming.
- Ian Shaw (2012). 'Life and Death in Droneworld'. Critical Asian Studies, 44 (4): pp. 651-658
- Ian Shaw (2012). 'Killer Robots: Are we really Losing Humanity?'. e-International Relations.
- Ian Shaw (2012). 'From Baseworld to Droneworld'. Antipode Intervention (online).
- I also regularly update a blog called Understanding Empire.
More-than-Human Geographies and Object-Oriented Philosophy
The complex relationships between 'nature' and 'society' is crucial in thinking through what is at stake in an ever more hybrid world. Past reserach includes outlining the politics of 'more-than-human events'. Recent collaborations with Katie Meehan and Sallie Marston are centred around the role objects play in configurations and executions of state power.
- Ian Shaw (2012). 'Towards an Evental Geography', Progress in Human Geography 36(5): 612–626
- Ian Shaw and Katie Meehan (2013). 'Force-Full: Power, Politics, and Object-Oriented Ontology', (in press)
- Katie Meehan, Ian Shaw, and Sallie Marston (2013). ‘Political Geographies of the Object’, Political Geography, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2012.11.002
- Ian Shaw, Paul Robbins, and John Paul Jones III (2010). ‘A Bug’s Life and the Spatial Ontologies of Mosquito Management’ The Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100(2): 373–392
- Ian Shaw, JP Jones, and Melinda Butterworth (2013). 'The Mosquito's Umwelt, or One Monster's Standpoint Ontology', Geoforum, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.11.028.
Political Philosophy and Popular Geopolitcs
I have long-standing engagements with political philosophy, particularly through the work of Alain Badiou and his theory of the 'event', and Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of life. I continue to research video games, with recent work with Jo Sharp investigating the subversive political qualities of aesthetics.
- Ian Shaw and Jo Sharp (2013). 'Playing with the Future: Social Irrealism and the Politics of Aesthetics", Social and Cultural Geography, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2013.765027
- Ian Shaw, (2010). ‘Sites, Truths, and the Logics of Worlds: Alain Badiou and Human Geography’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35(3): 431–442.
- Ian Shaw (2010). ‘WALL-E’s World: Animating Badiou’s Philosophy’ Cultural Geographies 17(3): 391–405.
- Ian Shaw (2010). ‘Playing War’, Social and Cultural Geography 11(8): 789–803.
- Ian Shaw and Barney Warf (2009). ‘Worlds of Affect: Virtual Geographies of Video Games’, Environment and Planning A 41(6): 1332–1343.
PhD
- 2012-. Ross Macgill, School of Geographical and Earth Sciences.
MRes
- 2012. Stacy Paull, School of Geographical and Earth Sciences. Title:"The Utopian Hive".
- 2012. Ross Macgill, School of Geographical and Earth Sciences. Title: "Deconstructing the Call of Duty: The Geopolitics of War Video Games"
