Dr Judi Atkins

Research Fellow in British Politics

My research is located on the interface between Political Theory and British Politics, with a particular focus on the relationship between rhetoric, ideology and the performance of leadership.

Before coming to Leeds, I worked as Research Assistant on the Leverhulme Trust-funded project ‘How the Leader Speaks: British Political Rhetoric and Argumentation’ at Swansea University in 2008-2011.

Research Interests

My current research focuses on the role of rhetoric in defining, managing and sometimes creating conflict within the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. I am also working with Kevin Theakston on aspects of British government and prime ministerial leadership, and I am co-authoring a book with Alan Finlayson on the organisation of political speech in Britain.

Teaching

I am co-convenor of the level 2 module ‘The Labour Party from Attlee to Brown’ (with Tim Heppell) and seminar tutor on the level 1 module ‘British Politics’.

Key Publications

Books

Justifying New Labour Policy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Journal Articles

‘The Ministerial Foothills: Labour Government Junior Ministers 1997-2010’ (co-authored with Kevin Theakston and Mark Gill), Parliamentary Affairs, forthcoming, DOI: 10.1093/pa/gss054.
‘“…A 40-year-old black man made the point to me”: Anecdotes, Everyday Knowledge and the Performance of Leadership in British Politics’ (co-authored with Alan Finlayson), Political Studies, forthcoming.
‘A Renewed Social Democracy for an “Age of Internationalism”: An Interpretivist Account of New Labour’s Foreign Policy’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, forthcoming 2013.
‘Moral Argument and the Justification of Policy: New Labour’s Case for Welfare Reform’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 12(3), 2010: 408-424.
‘How Virtue Theoretic Arguments may be used in the Justification of Policy’, Politics, 28(3), 2008: 129-137.
‘A New Approach to Humanitarian Intervention? Tony Blair’s “Doctrine of the International Community”’, British Politics, 1(2), 2006: 274-283.

Book Chapters

‘The Oratory of Gordon Brown: “Let the Work of Change Begin”’, in R. Hayton and A. Crines (eds.) Labour Orators from Aneurin Bevan to Gordon Brown (under contract with Manchester University Press).
‘Assessing the Impact of the Third Way’, in S. Griffiths and K. Hickson (eds.), British Party Politics and Ideology after New Labour (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010): 39-52. (With a Reply by Anthony Giddens)