Dr Ben Whitham

Dr. Ben Whitham (pronouns: he / him) is a Research Associate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS, for the duration of his research project ‘The global libidinal economy of small boat migration’ (2024-2026). He is also Senior Policy and Research Officer at Refugee Action, an NGO supporting and advocating for people seeking asylum in the UK. Prior to this, Ben was Lecturer in International Relations at SOAS (2021-2024), and before that at De Montfort University in Leicester (2016-2021). In 2019 he won the Political Studies Association’s (PSA) Bernard Crick Prize for Outstanding Teaching for his work with students on decolonising the curriculum in international theory. Ben has also been a volunteer, activist, and organiser in a range of social movements and groups, most recently including the Leicester People’s University, Workers for a Free Palestine, Care4Calais, and the UCU and IWGB trade unions.

Ben’s research interests cut across the fields of international political economy, international political sociology, and critical security studies. He is particularly interested in the relationship between intersecting socio-economic inequalities and insecurities on the one hand, and forms of state violence usually understood as aiming at ‘security’ on the other. Specifically, much of his research – stemming from his PhD on the UK’s ‘War on Terror’ – has explored the forms and functions of the post-9/11 rise of global Islamophobia, and its connection to the politics of socio-economic crises and austerity, particularly in the UK context. Recently, and relatedly, Ben’s research has focused on so-called ‘culture wars’ around issues like race and migration, the rise of a new transnational far right, the role of ‘libidinal economy’ in these trends, and the politics of ‘values’ in an age of polycrisis. Ben’s current research project looks at the rise and centrality of the UK’s political and media discourse around small-boat migration from 2019 to 2024, with a particular focus on the libidinal-economic dynamics at stake in the widespread demonisation of ‘small-boat migrants’, and the material impacts of this discourse upon both the lives of asylum seekers arriving on the south coast and on the UK’s wider political economy.

Ben’s research has been published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and edited volumes, and formed the basis of a REF2021 Impact Case Study. His book ‘Global Politics’ (co-authored with Andrew Heywood) was published by Bloomsbury in 2023. 

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• ORCID profile