Dr Rhys Machold

  • Senior Lecturer (Political & International Studies)

Biography

I am a scholar of policing, security regimes, racialization and empire, working from a transnational approach. My work has focused primarily on India and Palestine/Israel and relations between them. My book, Fabricating Homeland Security: Police Entanglements across India and Palestine/Israel (Stanford University Press, 2024) traces the political fallout of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, often known as “India’s 9/11” or simply “26/11”, concentrating on the efforts of Israel’s homeland security to advise and equip Indian city and state governments. Drawing on more than a decade of multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, it situates homeland security as a universalizing project, which seeks to remake the world in its image. The book tells the story of how claims to global authority are fabricated and worked out on the ground.

My current research and teaching interests engage with a number of overlapping themes and concerns: 1) state- and imperial forms of power, with a focus on security, policing, racial and carceral regimes across time and space, with a focus on wars on ‘terror’ and counterinsurgency campaigns; 2) the relational production of knowledge and expertise, inspired by engagement with geographical thinking and Science and Technology Studies (STS); 3) forms of anti-carceral, anti-imperial, anti-racist and abolitionist thought and praxis; 4) ongoing debates theory and pedagogy in International Relations, particularly inspired by anti-imperial, decolonial and feminist approaches; and 5) methodological concerns around secrecy, access, fragments and practices multi-sited ethnography.

I am an editor at Critical Studies on Security and an editorial board member at International Studies Review. Before arriving in Glasgow in 2018, I held research and teaching appointments at York University (Canada), the Danish Institute for International Studies, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Wilfrid Laurier University.

 

Research interests

• Security, policing and carceral regimes
• ‘Terrorism’, counterterrorism & homeland security
• Insurgency and counterinsurgency
• Knowledge-production, expertise and weapons systems
• Empire, colonialism and settler-colonialism
• India/South Asia
• Palestine/Israel and the

Research groups

Publications

List by: Type | Date

Jump to: 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2011
Number of items: 23.

2025

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X and Manchanda, Nivi (2025) Democracy, diversity and disavowal: tracing colonial lineages in India’s long wars. Review of International Studies, (Accepted for Publication)

Jacobsen, Malene H. and Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2025) Refusing deterrence. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, (doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2024.2441604) (Early Online Publication)

2024

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X and Printy Currie, Nicole ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-8292-761X (2024) Al Aqsa Flood in long histories of Palestinian resistance. Political Geography, 115, 103215. (doi: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103215)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2024) Fabricating Homeland Security: Police Entanglements across India and Palestine/Israel. Series: South Asia in Motion. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9781503639690

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2024) Semiotics of Rape: Sexual subjectivity and Violation in Rural India. AAG Review of Books, 12(3), pp. 23-25. (doi: 10.1080/2325548X.2024.2350388)[Book Review]

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X and Sen, Somdeep (2024) Refusing police power: resistances and ambivalences to state violence. Society and Space Open Site, 22 April.

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2024) After 26/11: India, Palestine/Israel, and the Fabrication of Homeland Security. Navayana Publishing. ISBN 9788194631316

2023

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2023) Unsettling the Hamas taboo: fragments, narrative and the politics of exposure. International Politics Reviews, 60, pp. 754-761. (doi: 10.1057/s41311-023-00457-5)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2023) Staying with the failures: Iron Dome and Zionist security “innovation”. In: Joronen, Mikko and Griffiths, Mark (eds.) Encounters with Colonial Power: Emergent Spaces of Violence and Struggle in Palestine. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln. (Accepted for Publication)

2022

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2022) India’s counterinsurgency knowledge: theorizing global position in wars on terror. Small Wars and Insurgencies, 33(4-5), pp. 796-818. (doi: 10.1080/09592318.2022.2034352)

2021

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X and Charrett, Catherine Chiniara (2021) Beyond ambivalence: locating the whiteness of security. Security Dialogue, 52(1_supp), pp. 38-48. (doi: 10.1177/09670106211031044)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2021) The Iron Dome System Is a Monument to Israel’s Hubris. [Website]

2020

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X and Bhungalia, Lisa (2020) "Violence Work". Society and Space Open Site, 24 Aug. [Book Review]

Velednitsky, Stepha, Salazar Hughes, Sara and Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2020) Political geographical perspectives on settler colonialism. Geography Compass, 14(6), e12490. (doi: 10.1111/gec3.12490)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2020) Policing reality: Urban disorder, failure, and expert undoings. International Political Sociology, 14(1), pp. 22-39. (doi: 10.1093/ips/olz027)

2019

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2019) The Privatization of Israeli Security By Shir Hever. London: Pluto Press, 2018. 256 pp. Hardcover. ISBN 978-0-7453-3720-3. Conflict and Society, 5(1), pp. 204-205. (doi: 10.3167/arcs.2019.050113)[Book Review]

2018

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2018) Reconsidering the laboratory thesis: Palestine/Israel and the geopolitics of representation. Political Geography, 65, pp. 88-97. (doi: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2018.04.002)

2017

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2017) Militarising Mumbai? The ‘politics’ of response. Contexto Internacional, 39(3), pp. 477-498. (doi: 10.1590/s0102-8529.2017390300002)

2016

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2016) Security Preparedness in European Cities. Is it really time to learn from Israel? Documentation. DIIS: Danish Institute for International Studies.

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2016) Learning from Israel? ‘26/11’ and the anti-politics of urban security governance. Security Dialogue, 47(4), pp. 275-291. (doi: 10.1177/0967010616645019)

2015

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2015) Mobility and the model: policy mobility and the becoming of Israeli Homeland Security dominance. Environment and Planning A, 47(4), pp. 816-832. (doi: 10.1068/a140010p)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2015) Intervention – “Re-enacting Israel’s Counter-terror Omnipotence: An Opening”. [Website]

2011

Pelkmans, Mathijs and Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2011) Conspiracy theories and their truth trajectories. Focaal, 2011(59), pp. 66-80. (doi: 10.3167/fcl.2011.590105)

This list was generated on Thu Jul 3 20:24:08 2025 BST.
Number of items: 23.

Articles

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X and Manchanda, Nivi (2025) Democracy, diversity and disavowal: tracing colonial lineages in India’s long wars. Review of International Studies, (Accepted for Publication)

Jacobsen, Malene H. and Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2025) Refusing deterrence. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, (doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2024.2441604) (Early Online Publication)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X and Printy Currie, Nicole ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-8292-761X (2024) Al Aqsa Flood in long histories of Palestinian resistance. Political Geography, 115, 103215. (doi: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103215)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X and Sen, Somdeep (2024) Refusing police power: resistances and ambivalences to state violence. Society and Space Open Site, 22 April.

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2023) Unsettling the Hamas taboo: fragments, narrative and the politics of exposure. International Politics Reviews, 60, pp. 754-761. (doi: 10.1057/s41311-023-00457-5)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2022) India’s counterinsurgency knowledge: theorizing global position in wars on terror. Small Wars and Insurgencies, 33(4-5), pp. 796-818. (doi: 10.1080/09592318.2022.2034352)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X and Charrett, Catherine Chiniara (2021) Beyond ambivalence: locating the whiteness of security. Security Dialogue, 52(1_supp), pp. 38-48. (doi: 10.1177/09670106211031044)

Velednitsky, Stepha, Salazar Hughes, Sara and Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2020) Political geographical perspectives on settler colonialism. Geography Compass, 14(6), e12490. (doi: 10.1111/gec3.12490)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2020) Policing reality: Urban disorder, failure, and expert undoings. International Political Sociology, 14(1), pp. 22-39. (doi: 10.1093/ips/olz027)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2018) Reconsidering the laboratory thesis: Palestine/Israel and the geopolitics of representation. Political Geography, 65, pp. 88-97. (doi: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2018.04.002)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2017) Militarising Mumbai? The ‘politics’ of response. Contexto Internacional, 39(3), pp. 477-498. (doi: 10.1590/s0102-8529.2017390300002)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2016) Learning from Israel? ‘26/11’ and the anti-politics of urban security governance. Security Dialogue, 47(4), pp. 275-291. (doi: 10.1177/0967010616645019)

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2015) Mobility and the model: policy mobility and the becoming of Israeli Homeland Security dominance. Environment and Planning A, 47(4), pp. 816-832. (doi: 10.1068/a140010p)

Pelkmans, Mathijs and Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2011) Conspiracy theories and their truth trajectories. Focaal, 2011(59), pp. 66-80. (doi: 10.3167/fcl.2011.590105)

Books

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2024) Fabricating Homeland Security: Police Entanglements across India and Palestine/Israel. Series: South Asia in Motion. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9781503639690

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2024) After 26/11: India, Palestine/Israel, and the Fabrication of Homeland Security. Navayana Publishing. ISBN 9788194631316

Book Sections

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2023) Staying with the failures: Iron Dome and Zionist security “innovation”. In: Joronen, Mikko and Griffiths, Mark (eds.) Encounters with Colonial Power: Emergent Spaces of Violence and Struggle in Palestine. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln. (Accepted for Publication)

Book Reviews

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2024) Semiotics of Rape: Sexual subjectivity and Violation in Rural India. AAG Review of Books, 12(3), pp. 23-25. (doi: 10.1080/2325548X.2024.2350388)[Book Review]

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X and Bhungalia, Lisa (2020) "Violence Work". Society and Space Open Site, 24 Aug. [Book Review]

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2019) The Privatization of Israeli Security By Shir Hever. London: Pluto Press, 2018. 256 pp. Hardcover. ISBN 978-0-7453-3720-3. Conflict and Society, 5(1), pp. 204-205. (doi: 10.3167/arcs.2019.050113)[Book Review]

Research Reports or Papers

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2016) Security Preparedness in European Cities. Is it really time to learn from Israel? Documentation. DIIS: Danish Institute for International Studies.

Website

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2021) The Iron Dome System Is a Monument to Israel’s Hubris. [Website]

Machold, Rhys ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-392X (2015) Intervention – “Re-enacting Israel’s Counter-terror Omnipotence: An Opening”. [Website]

This list was generated on Thu Jul 3 20:24:08 2025 BST.

Supervision

  • Hilal, Raghd
    Place under threat: Mapping the Lived Experience of Young Palestinians
  • Printy Currie, Nicole
    Geographies of Life and Belonging in Palestine: the Practices of Retrieving the Incarcerated Dead