Department of Politics and International Studies
Dr Chris Deacon
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Key information
Key information
- Qualifications
- BA (Cambridge), MA (SOAS), MSc (LSE), PhD (LSE)
- Building
- SOAS University of London, Main Building
- Office
- P262
- Email address
- cd40@soas.ac.uk
Biography
Chris Deacon is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Politics and International Relations at the Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS University of London. His research relates to the international politics of memory and identity, particularly within East Asia. At SOAS, Chris currently convenes an undergraduate module on the international relations of East Asia, and a postgraduate module on international theory.
Before joining SOAS, Chris was based at the Department of International Relations of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he undertook his PhD – funded by the Economic and Social Research Council – and was an award-winning teacher of the core undergraduate module in International Relations. Before this, Chris gained a BA in Asian & Middle Eastern Studies (Japanese Studies) at the University of Cambridge, an MA in Korean Studies and East Asian Politics at SOAS, and an MSc in International Relations (Research) at LSE.
Between these undergraduate and postgraduate studies, Chris attended law school and qualified as a solicitor at the London law firm Slaughter and May, where he worked as an international competition lawyer. During his legal career, he also spent time working in Dubai, Brussels and Tokyo, including a secondment to the Japanese firm Anderson Mori & Tomotsune.
Research interests
Chris’s research sits at the intersection of International Relations theory, critical security studies and foreign policy analysis. In particular, Chris’s work is currently focused on examining the conflictual international politics of memory and identity – how and why states fight over difficult shared history, such as war and colonial rule, and how such conflict is caught up in relational constructions of national identity.
These thematic and theoretical interests combine with Chris’s deep regional expertise in East Asia to result in the focus of his current research project: the so-called ‘history problem’ in Japan-South Korea relations. Chris’s work here aims to provide a novel account of this mnemonic conflict by analysing a vast range of original-language texts across politics, media and culture to establish and deconstruct widespread and alternative discourses of the past in both countries, thereby offering a deeper understanding of both the persistence of the history problem and the possibility of its overcoming.
In addition to his first book project on this topic, Chris’s research in this area has been published in journals such as International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, and The Pacific Review.
