"In Police, Provocation, Politics, Deniz Yonucu presents a counterintuitive analysis of contemporary policing practices, focusing particular attention on the incitement of counterviolence, perpetual conflict, and ethnosectarian discord by the state security apparatus."

Cornell University Press 2022

A highly original analysis of the role of war lawyers in targeting decisions, focusing on both U.S. and Israeli targeting practices and their legal protocols. Demonstrating how war lawyers can produce and extend military violence, as well as constrain it. Drawing on interviews with senior war lawyers and military operators from the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and the United States Air Force (USAF), as well as previously unanalysed military doctrine and briefing papers, and recently declassified military manuals.

Oxford University Press 2021

‌1st February 2021 

Online archive of material from RAF Fylingdales coming soon - Fylingdales Archive - https://fylingdalesarchive.org.uk/

Wednesday 27th November 3-4.30pm

Newcastle University, OLB2.29 (Old Library Building 2.29)

Join us for a conversation on women veterans with Andrea Goldstein, US reserve Naval Officer and Senior Policy Advisor to the Women Veterans Task Force, US House of Representatives Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Andrea joined the Women Veterans Task Force in March 2019. She joined the US Navy in 2009 and now serves as a reservist, and military gender advisor in NATO, focusing on gender as part of military strategy and operations. She has published in the International Feminist Journal of Politics on resistance to women in combat roles and more widely, in The New York Times, Task & Purpose, Proceedings, Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, War Horse and Business Insider. Andrea is a Pat Tillman Scholar and holds a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a bachelor’s degree in History and Classics from the University of Chicago

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The exhibition emerged from a series of art sessions for veterans, organised by Forward Assist and Dr Michael Mulvihill, Newcastle University. Funded by the Big Lottery: Awards for All, the project took the military use of landscape drawing and painting techniques as its starting point and gave veterans an opportunity to use their own experiences of field artillery exercises to develop skills in landscape drawing.

From the Renaissance to the early 20th century, many artists have created work inspired by experiences of war and landscapes. The famous Impressionist painter, Renoir, for example, used easel painting as a way to gather intelligence on the battlefields of the French Prussian War.

Through the workshops and drawing sessions at locations such as Hadrian’s Wall and Blyth Battery, many of the veterans at Forward Assist have developed skills in landscape drawing and in the process have been able to improve their wellbeing and confidence.

Alongside these works, the exhibition will also showcase other art works made by veterans engaged in creative activities at Forward Assist, and which represent their individual experiences as they transition from military to civilian life.

Artists' moving image screening

FORCES/FIELDS: THREE WORKS ON CONFLICT, MILITARISM AND THEIR LEGACIES

Rachel Garfield, Margareta Kern, Anne Robinson with discussion chaired by Rachel Woodward.

Thu 7 November // 19:30 / Star and Shadow Cinema

Examining the persistent and pervasive presence of war in all of our lives: each artist engages with the complexities of militarism and conflict: Robinson ‘listening to the past’ through fragmented intergenerational memory, Garfield asking questions about 20th century certainties through subjective experiences in military outposts and Kern interrogating the presence of ships and war games too close to home.

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b1gn

A British Guide to the End of the World came about after a TV producer heard Newcastle University researcher Michael Mulvihill speaking about his thesis, which looks at how creative arts can investigate the effects of the nuclear deterrent on society.

Michael was at a series of workshops organised by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership when he was asked to pitch his thesis to a group of television producers.

Now, he is an associate producer on the 80 minute film which is directed by BAFTA winner Dan Vernon and produced by award winning production company Erica Starling Productions. It is being broadcast as part of a Cold War season on BBC Four, timed to coincide with 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A Research Agenda for Military Geographies, edited by Professor Rachel Woodward, explores how military activities and phenomena are shaped by geography, and how geographies are in turn shaped by military practices. A variety of future research agendas are mapped out, examining the questions faced by geographers when studying the military and its effects.

Bringing together chapters from leading contributors, this Research Agenda explores a range of geographical places, spaces, environments and landscapes, examining peoples’ experiences of the military in a variety of contexts. Chapters investigate key topics from armed conflict to its aftermath, as well as the study of the economic, social, political and cultural practices that make war possible. Providing interdisciplinary insights to military geography issues in European, North American, African and Asian contexts, this timely book sets out key areas of scholarship for discussion.

‘NATO, Gender and the Military’ draws on newly de-classified NATO documents dating back to the 1960s, as well as interviews with military and civilian NATO officials, to tell the story of how the organisation has worked to advance women’s status among its members.

One of the book’s authors is Dr Katharine Wright, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, Newcastle University. She said: “NATO has always been concerned with gender and its gender story matters both for the way it operates internationally and how it is structured as an institution.

“But the progress over the last 50 years oversimplifies the achievements of the extraordinary women who have done much of this work voluntarily, on top of their existing day jobs as serving military personnel.” 

The book is officially launched this week at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where Dr Wright will be joined by her co-authors, Dr Matthew Hurley from Sheffield Hallam University and Colonel Jesus Gil Ignacio Ruiz, and other academics to discuss integrating gender perspectives and accountability.

The Unblinking Eye: 55 Years of Space Operations on Fylingdales Moor makes public for the first time objects from RAF Fylingdales Archive alongside new works by Dr. Michael Mulvihill. Dr. Mulvihill has been the first Artist in Residence at RAF Fylingdales (2016-2019) as part of an AHRC Northern Bridge PhD between the School of Arts and Cultures and School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University. The exhibition presents new research on the history and affects of RAF Fylingdales in local, national and international contexts, highlighting North York Moors integral role in international space monitoring and cultural legacy of the iconic ‘golf balls’.

The exhibition is structured in three sections: Drawing + RCA presents RCA trade magazines, architectural drawings of the original geodesic domes from 1963 as well as drawings by Dr. Mulvihill. This section highlights the relationship between RCA records and the development of RAF Fylingdales; Space Operations shows photographs and sculptures from the RAF Fylingdales archive alongside drawings that reflect upon the station’s entangled role of monitoring 49,000 objects, including the international space station, in orbit around the Earth and Ballistic missile early warning; Art + Archive at RAF Fylingdales in this
section the interconnections and relationships between RAF Fylingdales and North American mid-century modern art are explored, highlighting the unexpected relationships between aesthetics of modern art and the
operational practice of early warning monitoring. Alongside the exhibition there are a series of public programme events outlined below and an exhibition
catalogue.

Public Programme

Remembering the Golf Balls: Saturday 31st August 12.00-16.00

Drop-in Oral History Collection

A one-day event in which the public will share their accounts and stories of RAF Fylingdales from early construction to contemporary operations. It is intended that this event will build the foundations of an oral history archive of space and deterrence operations on the North Yorkshire Moors.

Military Landscapes: Sunday 8th September 11.00-14.00

Michael Mulvihill and Professor Rachel Woodward (human geographer specializing in military geographies, Newcastle University) will lead a walk along the Lyke Wake Walk towards RAF Fylingdales. The walk will make visible the complex phenomenological impressions and interactions the military and space radar has upon the landscape and environment of the North Yorkshire Moors National Park.

The Unblinking Eye: Thursday 19th September 18.00-19.30

Public talk Dr. Michael Mulvihill (Artist in Residence at RAF Fylingdales) and Professor Richard Clay Professor of Digital Cultures Newcastle University discuss the artist residency, the making of the BBC Four radio programme Two Minutes to Midnight, exploring why we are no longer afraid of nuclear annihilation, and whether we should be https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bgrwm3