Dr Margot Tudor

Overview

Dr Margot Tudor's work examines the colonial continuities of historical international interventions, specialising in UN peacekeeping missions.

Her first book, Blue Helmet Bureaucrats: United Nations Peacekeeping and the Reinvention of Colonialism, 1945-1971 was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. It focuses on the first four armed UN peacekeeping missions and examines the international officials' influence on post-colonial state formation. The book reveals the colonial continuities of post-war international security practices and identifies the racialised practices of mid-level personnel in the field. It was shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society's 2024 Gladstone Award and received an Honorable Mention for the ISA PEACE Best Female Scholar Book Award in 2024.

From 2024-2026, she is Co-lead on the AHRC Curiosity Grant 'Rethinking Internationalism: Histories and Pluralities', jointly run by PI Professor Jessica Reinisch and fellow co-leads Dr Ria Kapoor and Dr Daniel Laqua.

In 2026, she published an edited volume with Dr Brian Drohan, Military Humanitarianism: Aid Operations and Armed Forces, with Cornell University Press. The volume offers an alternative interpretation to the traditional framing of military actors as a homogenous group and humanitarian actors as impartial intermediaries between armed groups and aid recipients.

She is currently working on the following main projects: 1) a second monograph on the first UN peacekeeping mission (UNEF) and military masculinities; 2) co-editing a special issue on humanitarian (in)security with Dr Myfanwy James for Security Dialogue; 3) establishing a Critical Interventions Network.

Her twitter is: @margottudor

https://margottudor.wordpress.com/

Research Background

In 2020, Margot finished her ESRC-funded thesis, 'Blue Helmet Bureaucrats: UN Peacekeeping Missions and the Formation of the Post-Colonial International Order, 1956-1971' at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, based at the University of Manchester. Her PhD was a history of United Nations peacekeeping missions during the height of decolonisation (1956-1971). It highlighted the colonial continuities and lineages of peacekeeping practices in the field by taking a comparative approach to the first four armed UN missions: UNEF (Sinai and Gaza), ONUC (Congo), UNTEA (West Papua), and UNFICYP (Cyprus). During her time at the University of Manchester, she won the Faculty of Humanities Award for Distinguished Achievement.

In June 2021, her PhD thesis was awarded the BISA Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize 2021. In November, it was announced as runner up for the British International History Group (BIHG) Michael Dockrill Thesis Prize 2021.

Margot's article 'Gatekeepers to Decolonisation: Recentring the UN Peaceekepers on the Frontline of West Papua's Re-colonisation, 1962-3' won the ISA HIST Section's Merze Tate Prize for Best Article in Historical International Relations 2022 and was shortlisted for the RHS' Alexander Prize 2022. She served on the ISA HIST Merze Tate Prize jury from 2023-2025.

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Interested in supervising PhD students on the following topics:

- United Nations

- Peacekeeping

- International military interventions

- Peace

- Colonial and post-colonial history

- Decolonisation and anticolonial activism

- Race and racism in international order

- Liberal Internationalism

Please be aware that Margot can only serve as second supervisor, so ensure that you confirm a primary supervisor before contacting her.

Employment

• Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Exeter, UK, January 2021 - March 2023
• Guest Teacher, LSE, UK, September - December 2020
• Research Assistant, University of Manchester, UK, August - December 2020
• Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Manchester, UK, September 2018 - January 2021

Publications by category