Name Bill Durodie | ||
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Big Data needs Big Ideas: Engaging social science for effective security science and technology
Professor Bill Durodié is Chair of International Relations at the University of Bath, UK. His inaugural professorial lecture there: The Politics of Risk and Resilience - Fear and Terror in a World without Meaning, was delivered on 29 October 2015. In June 2016, rejecting all the official campaigns, he argued on grounds of democratic accountability and moral autonomy for the UK to give up its membership of the European Union.
Contents
- Big Data needs Big Ideas Engaging social science for effective security science and technology
- Selected journal articles
- References
He was formerly Professor in the School of Humanitarian Studies at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia, where he was Program Head for the Conflict Analysis and Management programs. Before that he held positions at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, in the Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis at Cranfield University, part of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom at Shrivenham, and in the War Studies Group of King's College London.
In 2014 he was appointed as a Visiting Professor to CELAP – the China Executive Leadership Academy Pudong – one of China's top four national 'Party Schools', in Shanghai. He was also an Associate Fellow of the International Security Programme at Chatham House - Europe's leading think-tank - in London for over a decade.
His main research interest is to examine the causes and consequences of contemporary perceptions of risk, as well as how these are framed and communicated across a wide range of contemporary social issues. His work explores the limitations of risk management and of the so-called precautionary principle. He has questioned the motivations behind the growing demand to engage the public in dialogue and decision-making in relation to science. He has also sought to draw attention to the parallels between Islamist terrorism and contemporary Western nihilism, noting that many who engage in the former draw their roots from the latter and specifically stating that ‘Islam, for them at least, was more a motif than a motive’.
He publicly defended the need for BP to continue its exploration work in the Gulf of Mexico at the time of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and he supported the initial response of the Japanese authorities to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant emergency. On the other hand, he has questioned the dynamic behind environmental campaigns against pulp and palm-oil producers in Indonesia, and has openly challenged the World Health Organization in relation to their declaration of the 2009 flu pandemic, as well as the British government’s interpretation of the implications of the 2011 England riots. His most recent work proposes that Securitization (international relations) theory is too limited a framework through which to understand the British government's new Prevent Duty. This latter imposes new obligations on public bodies to tackle so-called Radicalization, which he proposes is better understood as being driven by a process of disengagement.
Durodié was educated at the Royal College of Science, part of Imperial College London, the London School of Economics, and New College Oxford, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. He was awarded his PhD through the Centre for Decision Analysis and Risk Management in the School of Health and Social Sciences at Middlesex University (UK).
His publication list includes articles in leading journals, and on the reading lists of internationally recognized universities – as well as a noted media profile from both writing press commentaries and appearing in broadcasts.
He featured in the 2004 BBC British Academy of Film and Television Arts award-winning documentary series produced by Adam Curtis; ‘The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear’. His appearance prompted The Guardian newspaper journalist Madeleine Bunting to describe him as ‘one of the most perceptive commentators featured in the series’.
Durodié was one of the founding members of the Manifesto Club, a network of individuals celebrating human achievement and challenging social, cultural and political pessimism.