Hannah Wright

@hannahwright.bsky.social

5643 Followers 1503 Following

Researching militarism, coloniality, state violence, abolition, gender, race, class. Lecturer at University of Manchester. She/her. ♿️ https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/hannah-wright

Manchester Jewish Action for Palestine is deeply saddened by the attack on Heaton Park Synagogue today, and our thoughts are with all members of the communities who have been affected. While all the details are not yet clear, we do not wish to speculate on the motive behind the attack. However, we must stand together against those who would seek to use the pain and grief of Jewish communities to score political points.
Cover of the book ‘Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse’ by Rosemary Hennessy
Screencap from the Daily Mail: Ditch the woke 'witch trials': Attorney General Suella Braverman hits out at diversity training and reveals she scrapped it in her own department Attorney General Suella Braverman, 42, has warned against diversity zealots Ms Braverman says she has scrapped equality training in her own department She says she discovered her staff had spent 2,000 hours in Stonewall lectures The Attorney General today launches a fightback against woke ‘witch trials’. Suella Braverman brands the diversity industry a ‘new religion’ in which zealots seek to punish unbelievers while others are too scared to speak out.
Diversity of thought as ‘mission critical’: Knowledge, politics and power in UK national security policymaking Abstract The idea that diversity and inclusion in policymaking institutions is a national security imperative because it enhances ‘diversity of thought’ has proliferated among policymakers in recent years. Building on critical, feminist and postcolonial scholarship arguing that constructions of gender, race and class undergird hegemonic militaristic and colonial approaches to security, this article analyses how the discourse on diversity of thought occasionally challenges, but more often reinforces these hegemonic approaches. Based on interviews with UK civil servants, the article explores how this discourse, and consequent measures to promote diversity of thought by creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace, have developed in the UK national security community, analysing how officials interpret the relationship between demographic diversity and knowledge production. Using feminist epistemologies as a heuristic, the article argues that although some officials view this agenda as a means to challenge militaristic thinking, the commonplace exclusion of structural power analysis places hard constraints on its ability to achieve this end and has enabled its recuperation by far-right anti-equality agendas. Ultimately, the politics of diversity are insufficient to overcome UK national security institutions’ commitment to militarism, which demands attention to the material structures that make militaristic approaches to security appear necessary.