Cynthia Weber is a professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Lancaster, England. She has described her research as broadly conceived of as Critical World Order Studies, a term that conveys both engagement with core disciplinary IR themes like sovereignty, intervention, and global governance while marking the intra- and inter-disciplinarity nature of the work. Her research addresses the following question: 'how do hegemonic discourses function, and how might they be resisted and/or reconstructed?' This question stems from a long-standing concern with US global hegemony, not only through US foreign policy but also through globalised expressions of hegemony found in popular culture, gender, and sexuality.

Cynthia Weber has previously written on the relationship between sovereignty and intervention, US foreign policy (especially in relation to the Caribbean), and various theoretical debates in IR theory (like gender, constructivism, and post-structuralism).

Her latest book is entitled Imagining America at War: Morality, Politics, and Film which takes up the question of US hegemony in the context of September 11. By weaving together IR theory, cultural studies, and gender and queer studies, the book focuses on America's emerging moralities in relation to the war on terror. It does so by tracing how popular films circulated in the US in the aftermath of September 11 both mark America's moral movement about post-September 11 foreign policy and participate in the reconstruction of American morality nationally and internationally. How American morality is conceived and reconceived – not only by foreign policy officials but by everyday Americans -- is vital to the practice of US global hegemony, which is central to how we think about international security and global governance.

Cynthia is currently, working on two projects. The first, an hour-long documentary on the topic of Post-9/11 US citizenship, the second an on-going project on 'the aesthetics of fear' as it is expressed politically through events like September 11, reactions to the 7/7 London bombings (especially through the we'renotafraid website), and Hurricane Katrina.

Recent articles

How have diverse Americans engaged questions of citizenship and identity in their everyday lives following the collective national trauma of 11 September 2001? Cynthia Weber explores through video the lived experiences of those who say "I am an American" in a different voice. openDemocracy features her work in the days leading to 9/11's sixth anniversary. Cynthia Weber here presents the thinking behind the project.

Shortly after 11 September 2001, George Bush urged US citizens to watch Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s film, Kandahar, set in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Why? Cynthia Weber investigates the president’s and the filmmaker’s visions of Afghanistan and Afghan women.