Embedded Files
My research focuses on the politics of security, technology, and violence, with particular attention to how gender, race, and sexuality shape whose safety is prioritized—and whose lives are treated as expendable. My work spans feminist security studies, international political sociology, and critical technology studies, examining issues such as disarmament and social order; civil-military relations; gender and security; emerging technology, cybersecurity, and global governance; and the politics of death and mourning. I publish regularly in leading International Relations journals and co-edit the journal Security Dialogue as well as the Cambridge LSE International Studies book series with Cambridge University Press.
Monograph
Monograph
Support the Troops: military Obligation, Gender, and the making of political community
Support the Troops: military Obligation, Gender, and the making of political community
Oxford University Press 2022
Oxford University Press 2022
In Support the Troops, I examine how public rituals of military support in the U.S. and U.K. during the early years of the global war on terror (2001–2010) rework longstanding associations between military service, citizenship, and masculinity. While liberal democracies increasingly rely on small, professional forces to fight distant wars of choice, cultural narratives continue to frame military service as a core obligation of good citizenship—particularly for men. I argue that “supporting the troops” emerges as a new, civilian mode of participation in war: one that appears apolitical and moral, yet functions to discipline dissent, reaffirm gendered ideals of national belonging, and legitimize ongoing violence in the name of liberal order. This book is the first systematic analysis of “support the troops” as a social and political phenomenon, and offers a gendered, transnational account of how war is made meaningful in the everyday.
Reviews:
Awards:
Awards:
Winner, 2024 Best Book Award, International Political Sociology Section of the International Studies Association
Winner, 2023 Canadian Political Science Association Prize for Best Book in International Relations
Honourable Mention, 2023 LMH Ling Best First Book Prize, British International Studies Association
Articles
Articles
Millar, Katharine M., Yuna Han, and Martin J. Bayly. 2025. “The Temporal Politics of Inevitability: Mass Death
during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” International Studies Quarterly 69, no. 2: sqaf023. https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaf023
Millar, Katharine M. 2024. “Limitations of Hypocrisy as a Strategy of Critique in International Politics.” International Theory 16, no. 3: 295–320. https://doi:10.1017/S1752971924000095
Millar, Katharine M., and James Shires. 2024. “Masculinist Actionism: Gender and Strategic Change in US Cyber Strategy.” Security Studies 33, no. 4: 670–703. https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2024.2351918
Millar, Katharine M. 2021. “What Makes Violence Martial? Adopt-A-Sniper and Normative Imaginaries of Violence in the Contemporary United States.” Security Dialogue 52, no. 6: 493–511. (Special issue, Neglected Encounters: Militarism, Race and the Politics of Coloniality, co-edited with C. Rossdale and N. Manchanda.) https://doi.org/10.1177/096701062199722
Millar, Katharine M., and Julia Costa Lopez. 2021. “Conspiratorial Medievalism: History and Hyperagency in the Far-Right Knights Templar Security Imaginary.” Politics 44, no. 4: 588–604. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395721101098
Millar, Katharine M. 2019. “The Plural of Soldier Is Not Troops: The Politics of Groups in Legitimating Militaristic Violence.” Security Dialogue 50, no. 3: 201–219. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010619836337
Millar, Katharine M. 2019. “What Do We Do Now? Examining Civilian Masculinity/ies in Contemporary Liberal Civil-Military Relations.” Review of International Studies 45, no. 2: 239–259. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210518000293
Millar, Katharine M., and Joanna Tidy. 2017. “Combat as a Moving Target: Masculinities, the Heroic Soldier Myth, and Normative Martial Violence.” Critical Military Studies 3, no. 2: 142–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2017.1302556
Millar, Katharine M. 2016. “They Need Our Help: Non-Governmental Organizations and the Subjectifying Dynamics of the Military as Social Cause.” Media, War & Conflict 9, no. 1: 9–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750635215606867
Millar, Katharine M. 2015. “Death Does Not Become Her: An Examination of the Public Representation of the Deaths of Female American Soldiers.” Review of International Studies 41, no. 4: 757–779. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210514000424
Book Chapters
Book Chapters
Millar, Katharine M. 2017. “Gendered Representations of the Deaths of Soldiers.” In Handbook of Gender and the Military, edited by Rachel Woodward and Christina Duncanson, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Here
Millar, Katharine M. 2016. “More Than One Myth?: The Democratic Control of the Armed Forces and the Myth of Militarism.” In Myths and International Politics: Interpretive Approaches to the Study of IR, edited by Barbara Bliesemann De Guevara. Abingdon: Routledge. Here
Academic Essays
Academic Essays
Millar, Katharine M. 2023. “Response to Stéfanie von Hlatky’s Review of Support the Troops: Military Obligation, Gender, and the Making of Political Community.” Perspectives on Politics 21, no. 3: 1019–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592723001755
Han, Yuna, Katharine M. Millar, and Martin J. Bayly. 2021. “Confronting the Pandemic: COVID-19 as a Mass Death Event.” Ethics & International Affairs 35, no. 1. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0892679421000022
book reviews
book reviews
Millar, Katharine M. 2023. Review of Deploying Feminism: The Role of Gender in NATO Military Operations, by Stéfanie von Hlatky. Perspectives on Politics 21, no. 3: 1020–22. https://doi.org/10.1017/S153759272300172X
Millar, Katharine M. 2020. Review of Bounding War and Politics, by Tarak Barkawi. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 33, no. 1: 35–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2020.1718373
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse