Alistair Shepherd

Alistair Shepherd joined the Department of International Politics in 2003 as Lecturer in Contemporary European Security and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2013. He obtained his PhD in Political Science at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, specialising in the EU's security and defence policy. Alistair is on the editorial board of the Routledge journal European Security. Between 2003 and 2008 he was a lecturer for the Scottish Central Committee for Adult Education in HM Armed Forces, he has continued to be an occasional lecturer on a MoD Short Course on European Security, and was also a contributor to the Jean Monnet Spring Seminars on European Security held in Ukraine in 2012 and 2014.

In 2007 Alistair received an Award for Teaching Excellence from Aberystwyth University. Prior to undertaking his PhD Alistair worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC.

Alistair’s research interests are in the field of security studies, especially internal and external security in Europe; Europe’s role in international security; NATO and Transatlantic relations; EU and national security policies; and conceptualising European power.

Previously his research focused on the civilian and military aspects of the EU’s security and defence policy and its implications for the EU’s role as a security actor. Alistair is currently undertaking two research projects.

First he critically examines the nexus between internal and external security threats and responses – the European security continuum. This project examines the extent and implications of the blurring of internal-external security. In particular, it studies the political and ethical tensions the transboundary nature of security creates in formulating policy and identifying capabilities and its impact on the nature of the EU as an international security actor.

Second, Alistair, with Claudia Hillebrand, is examining the implications of transnational organised crime (TOC) for security provision and governance at the state and supra-state levels in Europe. The project seeks to clarify conceptual understandings of TOC, the implications of framing TOC as a threat to state, societal and individual for security governance, and the consequences of these increasingly complex security structures and networks for the politics of security, specifically for accountability, legitimacy and oversight.