Dr Rabea Khan
PhD Alum
Rabea successfully defended her PhD thesis in June 2021 with a thesis entitled the ‘The Gendered Coloniality of the Religious Terrorism Thesis: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Religious Labels and their Selective Use in Terrorism Studies’. Rabea’s work is interdisciplinary and brings together the fields of Critical Terrorism Studies and Critical Religion, utilising gender and decolonial theory. Rabea also holds a BA in International Relations and Law from Oxford Brookes University and received her M.Litt. in International Security Studies from the University of St Andrews in 2015.
Rabea was the main organiser of the 2018 CSTPV Graduate Conference Contemporary Issues in Terrorism Studies. She has peer-reviewed articles for St Andrews’ Contemporary Voices in International Relations and previously worked as a tutor for undergraduate students in International Relations modules. She has also delivered the lectures on ‘Feminist theory in IR’ for the undergraduate module ‘Theories in International Relations’ in 2019 and designed and convened workshops for CEED’s Academic Skills Project for undergraduate IR students.
Rabea has previously published with Critical Research on Religion and is currently working on her first manuscript, based on her doctoral thesis.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @RabeaMKhan
“The Gendered Coloniality of the Religious Terrorism Thesis: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Religious Labels and their Selective Use in Terrorism Studies”
Rabea’s doctoral thesis investigates the colonial (racialised and gendered) origin and function of the popular category ‘religious terrorism’. Her thesis is a discourse-centred project with a decolonial mission which traces how the category ‘religious terrorism’ has been built on colonial knowledge and how its use and application continues to fulfil a colonial purpose. The thesis entails a Critical Discourse Analysis of 296 articles from the four most widely read and cited terrorism journals (Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Perspectives on Terrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism). The discourse analysis of these articles demonstrates how the religious label is applied selectively and in line with the colonial function it has been constructed for.
Supervisor: Professor Caron Gentry
Examiners: Professor Richard Jackson and Dr Gurchathen Sanghera
Research Interests
Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Religion, Gender, Race, Critical Discourse Analysis, Feminist Theory, Post- and De-colonial Theory
Publications
Rabea M. Khan (2021): Race, coloniality and the post 9/11 counter-discourse: Critical Terrorism Studies and the reproduction of the Islam-Terrorism discourse, Critical Studies on Terrorism
Khan, Rabea M. “Speaking ‘religion’ through a gender code: The discursive power and gendered-racial implications of the religious label.” Critical Research on Religion, 2021
Khan, Rabea M. 2019. “Book Review: Religion and international security.” Critical Studies on Terrorism, 2021 12:4, 755-757,