Dr Andrew Dougall
Researcher biography
Dr Andrew Dougall is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the HASS Digital Cultures & Societies Hub and a member of the School of Political Science and International Studies.
Andrew's research examines the connection between technologies of communication media and the constitution and contestation of international orders. He is particularly concerned with understanding how shifting media environments affect - and are affected by - the core institutions of global political life.
His forthcoming book (under contract with Oxford University Press), explores these issues by examining how digital media have transformed the conditions of success for nationalist challenges to international order. Comparing Trump's breakthrough in the 21st century United States with a similar – but unsuccessful – movement in 19th century Britain, the book argues that communication media shaped these episodes by differently patterning the constitution and distribution of meaning. Among the book's key contributions are to explain how media affect vertical challenges to the structure of international orders; to reframe IR's theoretical engagement with the relationship between media and order; and to situate the internet within a longer history of this relationship, contributing to a more specific and balanced view of its impact.
Andrew's postdoctoral research, funded by the Digital Cultures & Societies Hub, examines the global politics of content moderation on social media platforms. In particular, it explores how, by transferring harmful content from platform users to platform moderators, content moderation brings about a distributive politics of emotion with global political effects. It further seeks to understand what the evolution of this practice says about the relationship between the practical requirements of open global information flows and the norms of the liberal international information order, which sustain them.
Andrew received his PhD in International Relations from the University of Queensland in 2022. He holds an MA (Hons) in Politics & Economic and Social History from the University of Edinburgh (2009-2013), and an MPhil in International Relations and Politics from the University of Cambridge (2014-15).
In 2020, Andrew received a Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Tutor Award for outstanding teaching.