School of Social and Political Science

Thom Tyerman

Job Title

Research Fellow

Research interests

Research interests

My research draws on postcolonial, everyday/vernacular, and activist theories and positionalities to examine borders, resistance, and migrant solidarity politics. I have focused on the UK/Channel context for many years and am currently a research fellow on UKRI project 'Immigration Detention: Investigating the Expansion and Global Diffusion of a Failed Project’ (PI DR Ċetta Mainwaring). My book (2022) Everyday Border Struggles: Segregation and Solidarity in the UK and Calais was shortlisted for the BISA L.H.M. Ling First Book Prize.   

Background

Prior to joining the University of Edinburgh in 2024 I have worked at University of Warwick, Sheffield Hallam University, University of Manchester and University of Bristol. I completed my ESRC-funded PhD at the University of Manchester in 2016.

 

Publications by user content

Publication Research Explorer link
Tyerman T. Vernacular grammars of in/security: (Post)colonial language games of border ‘crisis’ in the Channel. In Jarvis L, Lister M, Oyawale A, editors, Vernacular Security Studies: Concepts, Cases, and Critiques. Routledge. 2026. p. 13-35. (Interventions). doi: 10.4324/9781003594123-2
Mainwaring C, Tyerman T, Dickson AJ. Walls and cages: A transnational blueprint for rising authoritarianism . Current History. 2025 Nov 1;124(865):289-294. doi: 10.1525/curh.2025.124.865.289
Tyerman T, Vaughan-Williams N. ‘Crisis’ in the Channel? Practices of securitization and epistemic borderwork in the British/European borderlands. In Scott JW, Wilson TM, editors, Routledge Handbook of European Borderlands. Taylor & Francis. 2025. p. 25-40 doi: 10.4324/9781003302018-2
Tyerman T. Beyond hope? An abolitionist reading of Billy Holzberg’s Affective Bordering in a time of neo-fascism: [Review of] Affective bordering: Race, deservingness and the emotional politics ofmigration control, by Billy Holzberg, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2024, 181 pp. Journal of Political Power. 2025 May 27;1-7. Epub 2025 May 27. doi: 10.1080/2158379X.2025.2509509
Tyerman T, Van Isacker T. ‘Here there be monsters’: Confronting the (post)coloniality of Britain’s borders. Review of International Studies. 2024 Nov 29;1-21. Epub 2024 Nov 29. doi: 10.1017/S0260210524000779
Massey R, Tyerman T. Remaining ‘in-between’ the divides? Conceptual, methodological, and ethical political dilemmas of engaged research in Critical Military Studies. Critical Studies on Security. 2023;11(2):64-82. Epub 2023 Mar 30. doi: 10.1080/21624887.2023.2194503
Tyerman T. Everyday Border Struggles: Segregation and Solidarity in the UK and Calais. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 2021. 206 p. (Interventions). doi: 10.4324/9781003095774
Tyerman T. Everyday borders in Calais: The globally intimate injustices of segregation. Geopolitics. 2021 Mar 3;26(2):464-485. Epub 2019 Jun 20. doi: 10.1080/14650045.2019.1631807
Thom Tyerman's Research Explorer profile