Dr Kiran Phull is a Lecturer in International Relations in the Department of War Studies. Her research examines the politics of global knowledge production using historical and sociological approaches, focusing particularly on the management of populations through opinion polling. She is interested in the critical interrogation of epistemic data technologies as forces that shape the conditions for governing social and political life, and she explores ways to challenge these dynamics.

Before joining King’s College London, Kiran was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics, where she was involved in the teaching and design of LSE100, an interdisciplinary social science training programme for undergraduates. She earned her PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics, where she investigated the history of scientific inquiry into Middle Eastern publics. Her doctoral research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Her empirical work is situated in sites such as social science institutes and universities, global private polling companies, and state departments. Kiran has research interests in critical pedagogy and the production of disciplinary bias in International Relations, as well as experience working in the private sector in quantitative methods and data analysis. She provides consultation on data analytics, survey research methods, and data visualisation in policy and higher education circles.

Research Interests

• Public opinion
• Knowledge production and epistemology
• Critical methods in International Relations
• Politics of numbers
• Science and Technology Studies

Publications

• 'International conflict studies: Critical perspectives on conflict and security' (2024) in An Introduction to War Studies (with V. Jabri, L. Ansems de Vries, and S. Engelkamp).
• ‘Visualising hope in the radical data work of W. E. B. Du Bois’ (2024), in Hope in the Anthropocene: Agency, Governance and Negation (ed. V. Walsow, P. Bargués, and D. Chandler).
• ‘Alternative metrics, traditional problems? Assessing gender dynamics in the altmetrics of political science’ (2023), European Political Science, 23: 179-198 (with G. Meibauer, A. Alejandro, and G. Ciflikli).
• ‘Gender and Bias in the International Relations Curriculum: Insights from Reading Lists’ (2019), European Journal of International Relations, 25(2): 383-407 (with G. Meibauer and G. Ciflikli).
• ‘Crossroads of Integration? The Future of Schengen in the Wake of the Arab Spring’ (2013), in The EU and the Eurozone Crisis: Policy Challenges and Strategic Choices, Routledge (with J. Sutcliffe).

See a full list of publications on Dr Phull's PURE Profile

Teaching

• Research Methods in War Studies and International Relations (BA2)
• The Global Governance of Conflict and Security: Theories and Methods (MA)
• Theories, Concepts and Methods in International Relations (MA)

PhD Supervision

Dr Phull is open to PhD supervision on topics relating to knowledge production and International Relations, critical approaches to data politics, global order(s) and hierarchies, and imperial knowledge production.

Current PhD Supervision

• Hongli Liu - https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/hongli-liu