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Senior Lecturer in War Studies, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge
Dr Tarak Barkawi’s research interests concern armed conflict between the West and the non-European world in historical and contemporary perspective. He has written on colonial armies, ‘small wars’ and imperial warfare, the Cold War in the Third World, and on counterinsurgency and the War on Terror.
More generally, he is interested in the place of armed force in histories and theories of globalisation, modernisation and imperialism, especially from a postcolonial perspective. He has also written on International Relations theory, the so-called ‘democratic peace’, and strategic studies.
Tarak is currently completing his long delayed PhD book, on the Indian Army in the Second World War, giving a postcolonial critique of military sociology and the ‘why soldiers fight’ literature.
During his sabbatical year 2010/11, he researched on the topic of Orientalism at War in Korea. This project used Orientalism to understand the shock delivered to the US military, government, and public by the events of the first year of the Korean War. It was an attempt to understand why and how ‘small wars’ generate political and cultural crisis in metropolitan countries.
In terms of smaller projects, Tarak is involved in two edited volumes, one on the problem of knowledge and expertise in contemporary counterinsurgency. With Shane Brighton, he has recently produced a paper on the idea of a war studies, critiquing the failure of the Enlightenment social sciences and humanities disciplines to take seriously the generative powers of war in society and politics.
