Laura is an Associate Lecturer in International Relations at University of St Andrews. Her research interests are interdisciplinary, drawing on International Relations (IR), social and political theory, critical security studies, international political sociology, cultural studies, and cultural and public diplomacy. Her work explores two largely under-analysed areas of enquiry in IR – the cultural and the everyday – and argues that culture and everyday life are co-constitutive of global politics. Theoretically, her research engages with and seeks to contribute to contemporary cross-disciplinary debates regarding identity, difference, global governmentality, performativity, everyday practice and power. Empirically, her research monograph examines the everyday sites, practices and performances of three US cultural diplomacy programmes launched after 9/11. Challenging mainstream IR approaches to cultural diplomacy and their preoccupation with soft power, the monograph seeks to provide a much-needed critical purchase of post-9/11 American cultural diplomacy. More recently, her research has been exploring further entanglements of culture, everyday life and global politics through the examination of the themes of war, aesthetics, and militarisation, and security and counter-terrorism.