International Espionage Studies Network
University of Roehampton and Florida Atlantic University
From the former Australian Intelligence officer known as “Witness K”, who provided evidence of Australia’s spy operation against east Timor, to the Dutch website Publeaks, a secure platform to leak official documents to the media, and Chelsea Manning’s leakage of sensitive military documents to Wikileaks, espionage and spycraft have long attracted global attention.
Undoubtedly, the work of spies and informants raises significant ethical questions concerning the targeting of particular communities, the potential of such targeting to increase rather than decrease stigmatisation and violence, the divergence of motives between informants and sponsoring agencies, and the co-opting of individuals engaged in ongoing serious criminal activity into the work of law enforcement. Yet, the intelligence provided by spies and informants by means of espionage and the practices of spycraft is critical to tackling threats posed by both state and non-state actors, threats which are arguably at their highest level since the end of the Cold War and which have been magnified by massive technological change in information gathering and dissemination.
The International Espionage Studies Network explores the workings of espionage, spies, and spycraft across a number of global contexts and within a varied range of narrative forms, offering a vital, interdisciplinary understanding of the value of covert human intelligence work.
Working with academics, policy makers, journalists, governmental researchers, creatives, and retired Intelligence agency officials, the International Espionage Studies Network cultivates an innovative new approach to university-industry dialogue and partnership engagement in a field of increasingly global significance.
IESN Leadership
Dr. Ian Kinane (UoR) is the General Editor of the International Journal of James Bond Studies, has published widely on Ian Fleming, and supervises PhD research in spy fiction and Intelligence work. He has strong partnership links with The National Archives and the Black Cultural Archives and is developing bidding activities for collaborative work around Black British and US spycraft and spy rings. He is the co-director of the International Espionage Studies Network.
Email: ian.kinane@roehampton.ac.uk
Prof. Oliver Buckton (FAU) is the author of The World is Not Enough: A Biography of Ian Fleming (2021) and editor of The Many Facets of Diamonds Are Forever: James Bond on Page and Screen (2019). His research involves the politics, psychology, and ethics of espionage in spy fiction from World War II to the present alongside actual intelligence operations. He is the co-director of the International Espionage Studies Network.
Email: obuckton@fau.edu
IESN Research Staff, Partners, and Affiliates
Richard Bagnold (RB concierge Services) is an ex-British Army officer of 20 years who is an award-winning food critic and the only person to have dined in and reviewed every Michelin starred restaurant in the UK (maintained each year). His company, Richard Bagnold Concierge Services, creates high end and niche experiences for discerning clients visiting London and the UK. Chief among his niche offerings are his James Bond-themed meal events, whereby he designs and curates bespoke tasting menus with matching fine wines and cocktails from having studied all the original Bond/Fleming novels. Whilst Richard has left the Regular Army, he maintains a light presence as a part-time Reservist Officer and is the heritage lead for various Regiments including The Long Range Dessert Group (LRDG) – the pioneers of covert, small raiding forces – founded in the Wartime deserts of North Africa by his Grandfather, Brigadier Ralph Bagnold OBE. His research includes that of Specialist wartime units of the British Army, to which he provides lectures to selected groups at exclusive, private Member’s clubs in London.
Dr. Elizabeth Baroni (FAU) served for decades in the Intelligence Community with a focus on science and technology intelligence. Her research interests include digital spycraft and the psychology of digital espionage. As a professor at the National Intelligence University, she is a founder of the Department of Cyber Intelligence and is a senior research fellow at the Centre for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University.
John Cork is the Executive Director of The Ian Fleming Foundation. He has written introductions for three hardback reprints of the original Bond novels – Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, and Goldfinger (2017) – at the invitation of Ian Fleming Publications. He has co-authored three books on the James Bond phenomenon for the James Bond producers (James Bond, The Legacy with Bruce Scivally, Bond Girls are Forever with Maryam d’Abo, and The James Bond Encyclopaedia with Collin Stutz). Through his company, Cloverland, Cork supervised the creation of special features documentaries, extras, and audio commentaries for numerous spy films, including much of the material found on the James Bond films through to Casino Royale (2006), the Flint films, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. He is currently in production on a podcast and video project, The Secret World of James Bond.
Philip Dethlefs (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) is a German journalist, correspondent, and broadcaster based in London, UK. He covers film, television, music, and other media for dpa (Deutsche Presse-Agentur), Germany's leading news agency. His research includes the music of James Bond – both from the film soundtracks and beyond – along with real-world locations featured in the films and books. Additionally, he explores the advertising of the 007 films, with a particular focus on their presence in Germany.
Email: philip@cinekompass.de
Dr. Adam Dobrin (FAU) is a Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic University, a Senior Research Associate International Collaborative Partner of Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (Malaysia) Global Research Network, and a Visiting Fellow in the Institute of Public Safety, Crime and Justice at the University of Northampton (UK). Adam was an Academic Fellow at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracy, where part of his Fellowship involved overseas travel for an intensive immersion in the world of terrorism, and the ways the political, diplomatic, military, intelligence, and criminal justice systems respond to or prevent it. He is a Certified Volunteer Policing Leader and serves as the 2nd Vice President for the preeminent international organization in volunteer policing, the Volunteer Law Enforcement Officers Alliance. He also serves as the Vice Chair of the Reserve & Volunteer Law Enforcement Committee in the Small & Rural Law Enforcement Executives' Association, and as a road patrol deputy with his local sheriff’s office’s reserve unit.
Email: adobrin@fau.edu
Barbara K. Emanuele (CUNY) is an adjunct lecturer at Queensborough Community College, at the City University of New York. Her academic interests include exploring the use of graphic novels in introductory literature courses as a gateway to studying more “traditional” forms in upper-level classes, and “ungrading” practices in the greater pedagogy of empathetic teaching. Continuing her focus on words and images, she has frequently presented on the patterns of hate speech and how to upend them in traditional and social media. Barbara has created a curriculum that explores how repetitive use of language and illustrations can be used to ingrain dangerous messaging into otherwise unsuspecting minds. She is currently exploring one of its manifestations in the form of “toxic fans” on social media and how their presence damages the reception of new media. To that end, Barbara’s areas of research include the post-Daniel Craig future of James Bond and how popular television and film content like I Spy can be used as tools to promote human rights ideals.
Email: bemanuele@qcc.cuny.edu
Robert J. Feeney (FAU) is Archives and Manuscripts Assistant at Florida Atlantic University’s Wimberly Library. He is a Certified Archivist and a PhD student in the Comparative Studies PhD programme at FAU. He has been a historical consultant for the History Channel, BBC America, and for numerous authors, state parks, and museums. His research focuses on the history of technology and material culture as it relates to military communication and intelligence gathering. He focuses on the electric telegraph during the American Civil War and the use of electronic communication technologies during the World Wars.
Email: rfeeney1@fau.edu
Dr. Adrian Finucane (FAU) is a historian of the Atlantic World. Her work focuses on intersections between the British and Spanish empires in the Caribbean and the Americas, including trade, smuggling, and spying. Her current book project, Captive Exchanges: Prisoners of War and the Trade in Secrets, 1700-1760, considers prisoners of war who worked as spies, pilots, and even deserters as crucial conduits for information in eighteenth-century warfare.
Email: afinucane@fau.edu
Kiera Fitzgerald (UoR) is a lecturer at University College London and a PhD student at the University of Roehampton and The National Archives. Her PhD focuses on how Britain’s female Special Operations Executive, F Section agents are represented and constructed in public archives, historical fiction, and life-writing. Her research interests include British Intelligence and the Holocaust, and the history of the British Intelligence services.
Email: fitzgerk@roehampton.ac.uk
Dr. John L. Flynn is a retired Dean and Professor from the University of Maryland. He is the author of 20 books, including the popular Kate Dawson Mysteries, which feature a female homicide detective who confronts megalomaniacs on a par with Ian Fleming’s villains. He also co-authored the compendium Everything I Know About Life I Learned from James Bond with Dr. Bob Blackwood. He is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Mystery Writers of America and is regularly invited to participate in their workshops and panels. Additionally, he is a speaker at Dragon*Con and other gatherings, and was a featured participant in 2003’s SpyFest, the first espionage convention. His research focuses on James Bond film props and costumes, and he owns an extensive collection.
Email: jflynn7294@gmail.com
Dr. Dustin Frazier Wood (UoR) is a cultural historian of collecting, collections, and antiquarianism in the long 18th century and a specialist in heritage partnership and public engagement. His research involves 18th-century spies, including the Chevalier d’Eon, the short-lived newspaper The Spy that circulated in the 1730s and 1740s, and alleged spies (and other Intelligence officers and agents who were members of London clubs and societies). He is leading a long-term project on spycraft and Intelligence work within the early history and collections of the Spalding Gentlemen's Society, Britain's oldest provincial learned society and second-oldest extant museum.
Email: dustin.frazierwood@roehampton.ac.uk
Dr. Nuria Godón (FAU) is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Florida Atlantic University. Her research explores themes of violence, gender, sexuality, cultural identity, and politics within Hispanic studies. Her scholarly research involves crime fiction with particular emphasis on the depiction of female victims and detectives. Her currently work examines the narrative of Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921), a pioneering Spanish author in the field of detective and crime fiction.
Email: ngodon@fau.edu
Dr. Lisa Haskel (UoR) is a multi-disciplinary practitioner with a background in arts and media production, and has worked across the arts and voluntary sectors. Her research involves explorations of the artist Neal White and the Office of Experiments on documenting “secret” sites that exist visibly in the landscape through accessing public sites and local knowledge, for which she works with the Centre for Land Use in the US.
Email: lisa.haskel@roehampton.ac.uk
Prof. Ian Haywood (UoR) specialises in British literature, radical politics, and visual cultures, particularly political caricature and graphic satire. He supervises several PhDs on British espionage fiction and the history of spycraft with links to The National Archives, and his research explores crime and espionage in Victorian sensation literature, particularly in the works of George W. Reynolds and Edward Lloyd.
Email: i.haywood@roehampton.ac.uk
Dr. Jack Hodgson (UoR) is a historian of childhood and youth activism in American politics of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His research explores children's roles in conducting espionage and information-gathering during the U.S. Civil War, American Communist children's communications with the Soviet Union during the Red Scares, and networking and information-passing between Communist youth in Bew York City and the Soviet Union.
Email: jack.hodgson@roehampton.ac.uk
Dexter Ingram (IN Network) is director of a nonprofit aimed at guiding young minds aged 13 to 26 towards fulfilling careers in national security. A former Naval Flight Officer and counterterrorism strategist, he has served in key roles at the State Department. His extensive experience includes serving as the Director of the Office of Countering Violent Extremism; Acting Director of the Office of the Special Envoy to Defeat ISIS; Senior Counter Terrorism Coordinator to INTERPOL in Lyon, France; Senior Political Advisor in Helmand, Afghanistan; Deputy Director of the Office of Preventing WMD Terrorism, and as a senior liaison to both the FBI and DHS. Devoted to community engagement and storytelling, Dexter shares his passion for history, national security, and service through his remarkable private spy collection. He serves on the Boards of the International Spy Museum; the National Counterterrorism, Innovation, Technology, and Education Centre (NCITE); the Sycamore Institute; and Globally. He has also served on the Board of Visitors at National Defence University and on the D.C. Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. An innovator in national security education, Dexter was selected as an International Counterterrorism Fellow in the inaugural class of U.S. CT professionals at NDU’s College of International Security Affairs, and a Diversity In National Security Network’s honoree in U.S. National Security and Foreign Affairs. He is also a frequent media commentator and speaker on national security issues.
Email: dexter.ingram@gmail.com
Dr. Deborah Jermyn (UoR) is a scholar of contemporary screen industries and genre cinema whose research work involves the relationship between “real life” and “fictions” in TV crime and contemporary spy cultures across a breadth of media and creative industry contexts.
Email: d.jermyn@roehampton.ac.uk
Dr. Caitlin Knight (UoR) is a criminologist interested in the sociology of emotions, emotional labour, and emotion management. Her research explores the emotional labour of individuals who have worked in espionage through an exploration of archival texts, autobiographies, and diary narratives.
Email: caitlin.knight@roehampton.ac.uk
Robert Laycock (Marlow Film Studios) is CEO and Co-Founder of Marlow Film Studios and brings 30 years of experience in the British film and TV industry as a producer, editor and writer. He is currently working on an adaptation of the celebrated cult novel The Magus with Sir Sam Mendes and Dame Pippa Harris. Robert is also an executive partner of the Ian Fleming Estate, including the creative opportunities of the James Bond franchise. He lives on an organic farm near Marlow, and is a dedicated supporter of sustainable agriculture.
Email: robert@marlow.film
Dr. Yuwei Lin (UoR) is a sociolinguist specialising in science and technology studies. She is a member of the “After Surveillance” network and has worked with several hacker events and communities such as MCH2022, CCC Summer Camp 2014, EMF2016, EMF2022, EMF2024. Her research explores computer hacker communities and participatory approaches to surveillance cultures, utilising a qualitative research to examine co-production cultures and community-based innovation systems within espionage studies.
Email: yuwei.lin@roehampton.ac.uk
James Lawler (FAU) served for 25 years as a CIA operations officer and was in CIA's Senior Intelligence Service. He was a specialist in the recruitment of foreign spies and focused on battling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As Chief of the A.Q. Khan Nuclear Takedown Team, which resulted in the disruption of the most dangerous nuclear weapons network in history, James received a CIA Trailblazer Award, the Director's Award from George Tenet, the U.S. Intelligence Community's HUMINT Collector of the Year Award, and the Donovan Award from the CIA's Deputy Director of Operations. He has published Living Lies, an espionage story of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, and In the Twinkling of an Eye, about recruiting a spy inside a covert Russian-North Korean bioweapons programme. Spyscape named Living Lies as #38 on its list of “Fifty Best Spy Novels Ever Written.” He is currently writing The Traitor’s Tale, about treason deep within the CIA.
Email: chmargau@aol.com
Dr. Stacy J. Lettman (FAU) is a postcolonial scholar specialising in the literatures and performative cultures of the Caribbean and African Diaspora and their contestations of age-old Western imperialism. Of primary interest is the Global North’s hegemonic ideologies and practices that involve visible and convert activities, namely espionage in the Cold War era leading to economic destabilisation and violence. Stacy’s book The Slave Sublime: The Language of Violence in Caribbean Literature and Music explores the affective impact of such forms of violence. Her current research explores the “ghost” in African Diasporic literatures and music as a metaphor for the invisible realms of espionage and other forms of European/American hegemony that haunt the present.
Email: lettmans@fau.edu
Prof. Doug McGetchin (FAU) is a world historian specialising in connections between Modern Germany and South Asia. His research most directly related to espionage and nonviolent civil resistance activities include “From Ghadar (Revolt) to Home Rule: Arguments about Violence and Nonviolence in the Struggle to Liberate India during the First World War”, World History Bulletin (Spring 2016) and "Indo-German Connections, Critical and Hermeneutical, in the First World War”, The Comparatist (2010). He has received awards to conduct research in Berlin, Germany (German Academic Exchange Service) and Kolkata (Calcutta) India (Fulbright-Nehru).
Email: dmcgetch@fau.edu
Dr. Nevena Nancheva (UoR) is a scholar of international relations and migration studies whose research focuses on issues of trust within diasporic migrant networks and communities, and on the role of espionage in foreign policy, national minority regimes, and asylum governance.
Email: nevena.nancheva@roehampton.ac.uk
Dr. Kyle Prescott (FAU) is a conductor of wind bands and orchestras with a keen interest in the intersection between musical and cryptologic acumen. He has presented his research on the cryptographers of United States Navy Band 16 for the National Security Agency’s Centre for Cryptologic History in Maryland, as well as in Missouri, Hawaii, and in the UK.
Email: kpresco2@fau.edu
Dr. Jason T. Sharples (FAU) is a historian of Early America. In his first book, The World That Fear Made: Slave Revolts and Conspiracy Scares in Early America, he examines the policing of enslaved societies and the power dynamics in intelligence gathering about domestic uprisings. His current project is on the British, Spanish, and U.S. contest for Florida in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Email: jsharples@fau.edu
Prof. Susan Schneider (FAU) writes about the nature of the self and mind, especially from the vantage point of issues in philosophy, AI, cognitive science, and astrobiology. Before opening the Centre for the Future Mind she held the NASA Chair with NASA and the Distinguished Scholar Chair at the Library of Congress. In her recent book, Artificial You: AI and the Future of the Mind, she discusses the philosophical implications of AI, and, in particular, the enterprise of "mind design". Susan recently completed a three year project with NASA on the future of intelligence. She now works with Congress on AI policy. She is delighted to be the founding director of the Centre for the Future Mind and co-director of the MPCR Lab at FAU's new Gruber Sandbox, a large facility which builds AI systems drawing from neuroscience research and philosophical developments. She also appears frequently on television shows on stations such as PBS and The History Channel. She writes opinion pieces for the New York Times, Scientific American and The Financial Times. Her work has been widely discussed in the media. She is currently working on a book on the shape of intelligent systems.
Prof. Taryne Jade Taylor (FAU) is a science fiction studies scholar and editor of the Routledge Handbook to CoFuturisms (with Grace Dillon, Isiah Lavender III, and Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay). Her research focuses on the politics of representation in speculative fiction, particularly Latinx futurisms and feminist sf. She is particularly interested in the intersection of espionage studies and science fiction studies. Taryne is also the submissions and reviews editor for the Americas for the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, editor of the Routledge book series Studies in Global Genre Fiction, and a juror for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.
Email: ttaylor5@fau.edu
Dr. Tamara Tomić-Vajagić (UoR) is a scholar of dance practice and visual arts whose research involves the choreographic potentials of crime scene photo walls as alternatives to embodied action as well as practice-as-research work around mock-spy/detective collages, which she uses to explore investigative reporting and truthtelling around espionage narratives.
Email: tamara.tomic-vajagic@roehampton.ac.uk
Dr. Lucas Townsend (JGUM) is a scholar of twentieth and twenty-first century Anglophone literature and film at the University of Mainz, Germany, with special interest in works of espionage, thriller, and detective fiction. He is a Trustee of former SIS agent Graham Greene's Birthplace Trust charity, lecturer in British literature at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, and a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of James Bond Studies. He has published a variety of articles on genre fiction authors, and is currently developing a monograph on Ian Fleming's relationship with modernism, as well as editing a collection of essays on Florida Noir.
Email: ltownsen@uni-mainz.de
Dr. Michael VanBlaricum (IFF) is a retired electrical engineer who was the CEO of a defense research corporation. His research specialties are in the field of electromagnetics, with a particular emphasis on radar, antennas, and nuclear weapons effects. He is the founder and current president of The Ian Fleming Foundation (IFF), a nonprofit corporation dedicated to the preservation of the legacy of Ian Fleming, his literary works, and his impact on popular culture. Mike has developed a world-renowned collection of the literary works of Ian Fleming and associated James Bond materials including manuscripts, letters, books, art, recordings, videos, ephemera, toys, and an extensive collection of research books associated with this cultural phenomenon. Currently, he volunteers in several departments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Dr. Kevin M. Wagner (FAU) is an Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University, where he specialises in the intersection of technology and politics. With a J.D. from the University of Florida and advanced degrees in political science, his research explores the impact of technology on politics both domestically and internationally. Kevin’s scholarship has been featured in top journals and law reviews, and his books, including Directed Dissidence: How China Wins Online, examine critical issues in the digital age. A recognised expert, he frequently appears in leading media outlets and has presented his work at major academic conferences, including the American Political Science Association.
Email: kwagne15@fau.edu