Headed by Trevor Stack (Spanish and Latin American Studies, Anthropology), CISRUL’s membership reaches across 8 disciplines to house a vibrant, diverse debate about the political concepts which underpin our modern world. It brings to bear expertise in anthropology, education, history, law, philosophy, politics, sociology and theology.
Together with the CISRUL members, PhDs and alumni listed below, other CISRUL associates are listed as PhD supervisors.
CISRUL – Who we are
Trevor Stack is an anthropologist who teaches in Hispanic Studies and is working on citizenship. He has published Knowing History in Mexico: An Ethnography of Citizenship (2012), and is lead editor of the CISRUL volume Religion as a Category of Governance and Sovereignty (2015). His articles include Beyond the State? Civil sociality and other notions of citizenship and In the eyes of the law, in the eyes of society: a citizenship tradition in west Mexico.
Tamas Gyorfi (CISRUL Deputy) has published articles on the different conceptions of the Rule of Law and the virtues of rule-based decision-making which is arguably central to the idea of the Rule of Law. He is also interested in how different constitutions and political theories conceptualise and interpret the concept of constituent power and the membership in a political community. He is a member of the Legal Theory Research Group.
Michael Brown is a historian of Ireland, Scotland and Britain more widely, with particular interest in the Enlightenment and the political culture of the eighteenth century. He is also the Director of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies.
Nadia Kiwan is Senior Lecturer in Francophone Studies. With a dual academic training in Francophone Studies and Sociology, Dr Kiwan’s research interests are focused on intersectional approaches to questions of migration, nationality, secularism and citizenship. Her latest monograph Secularism, Islam and public intellectuals in contemporary France was published in 2019.
Rachel Shanks is Interdisciplinary Institute Director of Social Inclusion and Cultural Diversity and Senior Lecturer in Education. She has worked in higher education, community education, the trade union movement and the voluntary sector. She has worked as a law lecturer, and in the University of Aberdeen’s former Centre for Lifelong Learning.
Neha Dwivedi began her PhD in October 2023, focusing on the discursive construction of the 'right' time in US-Afghan peace negotiations. Her research is supervised by Professor Gearoid Millar, Professor Joanne McEvoy, and Dr Tom Bentley.
Shao-Chi Kuo began his doctoral research in 2022 and joined CISRUL in 2023. Under the supervision of Professor Brian Brock (Divinity), he is researching the political and public theological significance of faith disobedience in Chinese house churches.
Sabelo Ndwandwe started in January 2023. His work under the supervision of Dr Owen Walsh and Professor Tommy J. Curry (Edinburgh) combines philosophy, critical race theory and social history to think about Black Maleness as a peculiar social location of sexual victimization and disposability that remains understudied in [southern] African Studies.
Sam McReavy is a third year PhD candidate, focusing on urban spatial theory and Science Fiction as a pedagogical tool in the work of Henri Lefebvre. His supervisors are Professor Timothy Baker (LLMVC) and Dr Joseph Pierce (the School of Geosciences).
Daisy Mugadza began her PhD in February of 2025. Her subject area is Constitutional Law, and, under the supervision of Dr Erin Ferguson (UoA School of Law and CISRUL) and Dr Robert Taylor (UoA School of Law), she is conducting research surrounding the separation of powers in English public law.
Boglarka Vincze’s PhD project began in October 2024. She researches waves of constitutional change in the UK’s devolved nations, focusing on the evolution of devolution frameworks. Her supervisors are Professor Tamas Gyorfi and Dr Erin Ferguson.