Dr Leonie Ansems de Vries is a Reader in International Politics and Director of Research in the Department of War Studies. She is also the Director of the King's Sanctuary Programme and Chair of the Migration Research Group. Leonie co-founded and co-chairs the Higher Education Humanitarian Group.

Leonie combines critical theoretical approaches with extensive empirical research using collaborative and arts-based methodologies. She brings together research on migration, borders and the politics of violence with practical action and policy development on safe pathways, including the development of safe pathways into UK higher education for displaced students and academics.

Leonie is the author of Re-Imagining a Politics of Life: From Governance of Order to Politics of Movement (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2014). Her forthcoming book, Politics of Exhaustion (Bristol University Press, 2025) examines the ways in which exhaustion is employed as a tool of governance to control forced migrants and how it is endured and resisted as a lived experience. Her research has also appeared in journals such as Review of International Studies, International Political Sociology, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Geopolitics, and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and on online media platforms such as openDemocracy and The Conversation.

Research Interests

• Politics of violence
• Migration, borders and sanctuary
• Critical approaches to international politics
• Co-creative and arts-based methodologies

PhD Supervision

Leonie is happy to consider providing PhD supervision in any area of her research interest.

Recent Publications

• ‘Together We Prepare a Feast, Each Person Stirring Up Memory’, Humanities 12: 98, 2023 (with Ed Stevens, Anna Khlusova, Sarah Fine, Ammar Azzouz)
• 'Politics of Knowledge Production in the Global Compact for Migration', Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 23:2 2021 (with Katharine Weatherhead)
• 'Immoral Borders in Practice', Geopolitics 26:5 2021 (with Nora El Qadim, Beste Isleyen, Signe Sofie Hansen, Sibel Karadag, Debbie Lisle and Damien Simonneau)
• 'The crafting of a paradox: Schengen inside and out', International Journal of Migration and Border Studies 6(1/2): 7-25, 2020 (with Christina Oelgemoller and Kees Groenendijk)
• ‘Violent Governance,Identity and the Production of Legitimacy: Autodefensas in Latin America’ , Journal of International Relations and Development 23(2), 2020 (with Alexander Curry)
• ‘Seeking Refuge in Europe: Spaces of Transit and the Violence of Migration Management', Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45(12) 2019 (with Elspeth Guild)
• Fracturing Politics (Or, How to Avoid the Tacit Reproduction of Modern/Colonial Ontologies in Critical Thought) (pp. 90-108), International Political Sociology, 11(1), 2017 (with Lara Montesinos Coleman, Martina Tazzioli, Doerthe Rosenow and Rolando Vazquez)
• ‘Politics of (In)visibility. Governance-Resistance and the Constitution of Refugees in Malaysia’ (pp. 876-894), Review of International Studies, 42(5), 2016

For a full list of publications, please consult the King’s Research Portal.