ResearchResearch

My research investigates how international and regional organisations – such as UNESCO, the European Union, and the Council of Europe – construct, negotiate, and mobilise discourses and practices around democracy, human rights, and educational governance. I analyse how norms are produced, circulated, and contested; how legitimacy is performed and challenged; and how emerging technologies and global pressures reconfigure institutional priorities and modes of action. This work bridges international relations, political theory, and critical policy studies (with a particular focus on education) to examine questions of power, accountability, and democratic agency in a rapidly changing world. Anchored in critical IR theory and critical policy studies, my work interrogates how power operates through norm production, institutional performance, and the politics of legitimacy in global governance.

I examine how societies experiencing or emerging from conflict negotiate coexistence, build trust, and pursue sustainable peace. My research focuses particularly on Cyprus analysing the political work of emotions, ethnic and religious identity, and institutional asymmetries in peacebuilding processes. I also work closely with bicommunal and international initiatives that promote reconciliation, teacher training, and conflict transformation. This strand highlights the complexities of peace in deeply divided societies and the everyday practices that make coexistence possible.

A central pillar of my work investigates how collective memory, identity, and power are negotiated through history education. I analyse the politics of textbook reform, the securitisation of history curricula, and the symbolic and ethical possibilities of educational “atonement” in the aftermath of violence. Drawing on transitional justice, memory studies, and critical security theory, this research examines how societies narrate injustice, acknowledge past harms, and use/abuse educational institutions to shape or co-opt democratic futures.

I analyse how education systems are mobilised in the name of security, particularly within counter-terrorism and PVE agendas. My work reveals how these policies rely on affective governance (fear, suspicion, anxiety), responsibilise teachers as moral regulators, and risk narrowing civic space. I highlight the democratic implications of preventive security logics and question how such approaches impact pluralism, safe spaces, and inclusion in schools and universities.

My research examines how artificial intelligence, data infrastructures, and algorithmic systems reconfigure democratic life, ethics, and human rights. I analyse how UNESCO and other international bodies construct global AI governance through norms, ethical frameworks, and regulatory discourses, and how these intersect with the commercial and political interests of Big Tech. My work also investigates the affective and pedagogical dimensions of AI in higher education, including how students navigate generative AI tools and the emotions, uncertainties, and dependencies these technologies produce. Across this agenda, I highlight how algorithmic systems foster new forms of opacity, polarisation, and inequality, and I foreground questions of transparency, accountability, and justice as central to democratic coexistence with AI.

I study how far-right actors mobilise education as a political battleground, shaping debates on national identity, history, immigration, gender, and citizenship. Our research (with Michalinos Zembylas) analyses the affective and discursive strategies through which far-right movements seek to influence curricula, educational values, and public institutions. Drawing on discourse analysis, affect theory, and political sociology, I show how far-right mobilisation relies on affective nationalism, restorative nostalgia, securitisation narratives, and the co- optation of democratic language. This work illuminates the broader implications for democratic citizenship, pluralism, and human rights as far-right movements gain influence across diverse political contexts.

I examine how the ecological crisis transforms core concepts in international relations, diplomacy, and justice. Our work (with Costas M. Constantinou) on making peace with nature and more-than-human politics challenges anthropocentric assumptions by treating non-human beings, ecosystems, and planetary processes as political interlocutors. Through projects on the diplomatization of nature and initiatives such as the Embassy of the North Sea, we explore how states, communities, and international bodies negotiate responsibilities toward the more-than-human world. This strand bridges IR theory, decolonial thought, and environmental politics to propose new models of relational coexistence, environmental justice, and planetary governance in the Anthropocene.