New project on Empathy and International Security (EIS)
Dr Claire Yorke will be joining the University of Southern Denmark as a Marie Curie Fellow to work on a new project on Empathy and International Security (EIS). This project expands Claire’s doctoral and postdoctoral research and draws on her professional background in international affairs and politics. Working with Professor Sten Rynning and colleagues in the Centre for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, her research will use a series of historic and contemporary case studies to examine how a more nuanced understanding of empathy, and the tensions inherent in the concept, can inform more human-centric approaches to security. Using an interdisciplinary and applied approach, and qualitative research methods, this research will look at the evolution and utility of empathy in the context of security strategy and policy-making, and analyze how it can be used to both alleviate and transform, or perpetuate or entrench, insecurity. It will involve a series of publications and outreach with academics, policymakers, and practitioners.
Claire is an author, academic researcher, and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Grand Strategy, King’s College London. Between 2018-2020 she was a Henry A. Kissinger Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at International Security Studies and the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University. Her writing and research explore the role and limitations of empathy and emotions in international affairs, diplomacy, strategy, leadership, and policymaking. She is currently writing two books on ‘Empathy and Political Leadership’, and ‘Empathy and Diplomacy’. Two further co-edited books on ‘New Perspectives of Diplomacy' will be published this spring with Bloomsbury Press. Claire teaches at university and has designed a professional online course for mid-level managers on ‘Empathy and Emotions in Policy-Making’ with the International School for Government at King’s College London. She received her PhD in International Relations from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, and has a Masters from the University of Exeter, and a BA from Lancaster University. Prior to her PhD, Claire worked as Programme Manager of the International Security Research Department at Chatham House (2009-2013) and as a Parliamentary Researcher to a frontbench politician in the Houses of Parliament (2006-2009).
In 2014, she was a member of the NATO and Atlantic Council Young Leaders Working Group, reporting to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on the future of the transatlantic alliance. She is on the Board of Advisors for Women in International Security UK (WIIS UK), Promote Leadership, and the Research Advisory Council of the Resolve Network.
We welcome Claire Yorke to our CWS team