Tom Vaughan

BSc (Hons) Politics, University of Bristol
MA Critical International Politics, Aberystwyth University

General Research Interests

• Nuclear politics and world nuclear order, nuclear weapons, technopolitics, infrastructure, South Africa, apartheid, political transitions, colonialism and empire

Funding Awards

• ESRC +3 Studentship, Wales DTP
• David Davies Masters Scholarship, Aberystwyth University

Aberystwyth University

• 2017/2018 IP10320, War, Strategy, and Intelligence
• 2018/2019 IP20320, War, Politics, and Strategy

My research addresses the technopolitics of nuclear weapons and infrastructure in South Africa, during and after apartheid, and the implications of nuclear technology for post-apartheid ‘transition’, domestic South African politics, and the international nuclear order at large. Via an interdisciplinary research philosophy, I propose a dialogical relationship between assumed ‘global’ and ‘local’ levels of political activity in nuclear politics, aiming to transcend the scholarly divide between accounts of ‘international’ nuclear politics on one hand, and ‘the social life of the bomb’ on the other.General research interests: Nuclear politics and world nuclear order, nuclear weapons, technopolitics, infrastructure, South Africa, apartheid, political transitions, colonialism and empire

Tom is interested in critical nuclear politics, and his current research explores the imagination and construction of alternative nuclear futures. He is interested in how particular visions of the nuclear (and non-nuclear) future have been created historically while others have been foreclosed, and also in the many ways in which disciplinary IR and strategic studies struggle to imagine the (nuclear) future. He is developing a postdoctoral research agenda to examine how these different imaginaries of the nuclear future can be built, and how far they can accommodate multilateral nuclear disarmament.

Tom joined the Department as Lecturer in Strategy and Intelligence in August 2022 from the University of Exeter, where he was an Associate Lecturer in Politics and International Relations. He was awarded his PhD from the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth in 2022 for his thesis on South Africa and the global nuclear order.