Prof. Caroline Kennedy-Pipe — Across Frontiers of Conflict: Arctic Geopolitics, Cold War Legacies, and Counterinsurgency

I have been Professor of War Studies at Loughborough University since 2018, teaching across modules on Small Wars, War in the 21st Century, and Urban Warfare. For our MA in International Security, I lead Hacking 4 MOD — an innovative module where students collaborate directly with the UK Ministry of Defence to tackle real-world security challenges. Few things are more rewarding than watching theory and practice meet in that space.

My current research explores Arctic geopolitics, with a particular focus on the Svalbard archipelago, just south of the North Pole. Together with my Norwegian colleague Dr Bjørn Kaltenborn, I am examining the local dynamics of Svalbard and its governance structures. My fascination with islands in the High North stretches back decades — from my earlier work on the Danish island of Bornholm, briefly occupied by the Soviet Army at the end of the Second World War. That occupation is little more than a footnote in most studies of the Cold War, but it remains noteworthy: after some months, the Red Army quietly withdrew from its foothold in the West. The Cold War continues to intrigue me, especially in light of current claims that we are living through a “new” Cold War.

Although I trained as a historian and strategist — completing my MSc Econ in Strategic Studies in the world-famous Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth — my work has always crossed disciplinary lines. Civil wars, insurgencies, and the politics of military intervention have shaped much of my research and teaching. In the 1990s, when independent publishers such as Frank Cass still thrived, I founded the journal Civil Wars to create a space for scholars examining internal conflict and its blurred lines between law, legitimacy, and violence.

That curiosity continues to guide me. My long-term engagement with The Troubles and the British campaign in Ireland, the army’s longest operation, keeps drawing me back to the human and ethical dimensions of counter-insurgency. More recently, I have turned to the moral silences of contemporary conflict, explored in my forthcoming article, “Soldiering and Silences: Witnessing Child Sexual Abuse in Afghanistan,” published in Parameters (Vol 55, No. 3, 2025).

Across these projects, my concern remains constant: how war tests our understandings of justice, responsibility, and moral accountability — and how law continues to shape the difficult conversations about ethics, memory, and the limits of human conduct in conflict.

Recent Publications:

Caroline Kennedy-Pipe and Martin Thorp (2025). Soldiering and Silences: Witnessing Child Sexual Abuse in Afghanistan. Parameters. Vol 55. No.3. Autumn. 10.55540/0031-1723.3328

Professor Caroline Kennedy-Pipe is Professor of War Studies at Loughborough University. She has published widely on Russia, the Cold War, and contemporary conflict, with research spanning strategy, terrorism, and drone warfare. Her current work focuses on Arctic security, Russia, and the geopolitics of the High North. A former Chair of the British International Studies Association, she has also served as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Defence Committee and Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford.