Dr Natasha Danilova joined the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Aberdeen in 2014. She specialises in interdisciplinary research, and draws on ideas from Feminist International Relations, Visuality and Art in Global Politics, Political Science and Political/Cultural Sociology. She completed a PhD in Politics at the University of Nottingham. Through her career, Dr Danilova lectured on gender studies, political and sociological theory, research methods in social sciences, the politics of memory, and security concerns in Russia and post-Soviet Eurasia.  

In 2016, Dr Danilova completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, and has achieved the status of Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK.

My research interests lie in the fields of International Relations, Critical Military Studies and Visual Global Politics. In particular, I study art/aesthetics and war, the politics of war memory, gender and war, and diverse issues of society-military relations, militarism and militarisation in Western and non-Western states. 

Current Research

My doctoral research looked at the discourses and practices of war commemoration in the UK and Russia. In particular, it examined the representations of British and Russian military fatalities in mass media, physical and virtual memorials, and war-related ceremonies with the findings outlined in my book, The Politics of War Commemoration in the UK and Russia (Palgrave, 2015). 

Research Projects 

I am currently working on a project exploring Military-Arts Collaborations from 2001 onwards in the US and Britain (The Carnegie-Trust grant, April 2022 - April 2023).

Additionally, I am a lead author in the co-authored publication project based on my recent research project, 'War Commemoration, Military Culture and Identity Politics in Scotland' (2017-2018), which was funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland (RG13890/70560). Kandida Purnell  and Emma Dolan have worked as Project Research Assistants, and are currently working as co-authors on joint publication projects. See updates regarding the project: https://twitter.com/scot_war 

Based on my experience of working as Co-investigator on the AHRC-funded 'Hero Project', 2015-16 (AH/M006271/1), I continue working on a series of collaborative publications relating to gender, race/ethnicity dimensions of popular heroism in Britain.   

PI1518 Introduction to Politics and International Relations 

PI3069 Political Research in the 21st century

PI4584 Gender and Politics 

PI4575 The Politics of Post-Soviet Eurasia (not offered in 2022/23)

IR4014/PI4071 Dissertation (UG)  

IR5001 Theories and Concepts in International Relations (PG) 

IR5901 MSc Dissertation (PG)

PI5516 MRes Research Methods (PG)

Dr Kandida Purnell, City University London; Art, Aesthetics and the Global War on Terror, 2018-19

Dr Ekaterina Kolpinskaya, University of Swansea; The politics of heroes in Britain and the United States, 2018-19

Dr Marianna Poberezhskaya, Nottingham Trent University; Media, Civil Society and Climate Change in Central Asia, 2018-19