Dr Alasdair Pinkerton

I am a researcher in political geography and geopolitics based in the Department of Geography, University of London. I am particularly interested in issues related to critical geopolitics, the media, and the 'international relations' of public diplomacy. I have developed particular interests in the geopolitics of the South Atlantic (Falkland Islands, Argentina and Chile) and South Asia (India, Pakistan and Afghanistan), as well as working extensively in the US, Canada and the UK. 

He has recent publications in 'Political Geography', the 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society', 'Twentieth Century British History', the 'Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television'. His first book, "Radio", will be published by Ashgate (and the Science Museum) in 2013. 

Biography: 
Alasdair graduated with an MA in Geography from the University of St. Andrews in 2001. He then moved to Royal Holloway, where he completed the MA Cultural Geography (2002) and an ESRC-funded PhD, entitled "Radio Geopolitics: the BBC World Service as Britain's 'Voice around the World'." His PhD was supervised by Prof. Klaus Dodds and was completed in late-2006. Alasdair has also been seconded to the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) where he authored a parliamentary report on the issue of 'Pervasive Computing' and the increasing ubiquity of micro-electronic technology within our built environment. 

Alasdair's research was previously supported by a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship (2007-10) which investigated the geo-strategic role of international broadcasting during the Cold War. In January 2009 Alasdair was awarded a further British Academy Small Research Grant to undertake a project to investigate US public diplomacy strategy at the height of the Cold War, 1950-1965.

GG1032: Geographical research & field methods 1 (Spain field course)

For several years I have co-led the Political/Historical Geography elements of the Spain field course, which runs in January each year from our base in Nerja, Andalucia. Teaching resources can be found via Moodle.

GG2052: Political Geography

This course introduces students to the field of academic political geography, and is designed to promote an understanding of the important connections between politics and geography. Using examples ranging from the Cold War to the War on Terror, this course challenges students to think critically about the ways in which the political world is constituted through popular and elite geographical representations. Teaching resources are available through Moodle.

GG5030: Principles of Environmental Sustainability (MSc Sustainability and Management)

This MSc degree programme explores the linkages between environment, socio-political and economic issues in modern society. It aims to equip students with critical knowledge of key theories pertaining to environmental governance for sustainability and understand how these theories are relevant in developing practical approaches to manage different types of environmental and human resources. Within the broader curriculum, I teach specialist lectures relating to representations of sustainability in the media and popular culture.

MA Cultural Geography (Research)

As part of this well-establish programme, I lead sessions related to ethnographic research, the interpretation of "sound" as an academic resource and co-organise a session that uncovers some of the assets held within the National Sound Archive at the British Library.

Media, Geopolitics and Public Diplomacy

My research principally focuses on issues relating to the media and public diplomacy, with particular reference to international radio broadcasting during the Cold War. Previously my PhD thesis (2007) explored these themes through the contextual prisms of the BBC World Service (the world’s most listened to international broadcaster) and the ‘radio geopolitics’ of postcolonial India and Pakistan. A British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (2007-2010) further examined these Cold War broadcasting experiences and conceptions of public/cultural diplomacy (what Joesph Nye has termed ‘soft power’), while critically addressing the strategic redeployment of international broadcasting resources post-9/11.

Geographies of communications research

Working with Klaus Dodds, I have developed research into the origins of, so called, 'communications research' in the Cold War United States. Sponsored by the US military and secret intelligence services, and working at the height of Cold War paranoias, academics throughout the United States sought to understand how? why? and where? people communicate and share information. One such initiative was Project Revere - a piece of experimental research that sought to determine how messages were transmitted and translated following an airdrop of leaflets in rural Washington State. These projects fed directly into the leaflet drops used by the US military during campaigns in Korea, Vietnam and Guatemala.