Simone Tholens

Simone Tholens holds dual academic positions as Part-time Assistant Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, and Associate Professor of International Relations at John Cabot University. Her academic career includes significant roles at Cardiff University where she served as Senior Lecturer (2016-2021) and co-founded the Centre for Conflict, Security and Societies, and Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe where she taught as an Adjunct Professor in Conflict Management and Europe-Middle East relations.

Dr. Tholens earned her PhD in International Relations from the European University Institute in 2012, followed by a post-doctoral Research Fellowship at EUI working on the ERC-funded Borderlands project (2013-2016). She has held visiting fellowships at the Norwegian Institute of Foreign Affairs and the Wissenshaftszentrum Berlin, and was awarded the prestigious Leverhulme Trust's International Academic Fellowship (2020-2021).

Her research program critically examines interventions, security assistance, bordering processes, and the materiality of global war practices through the lens of contestation and practice theory. She has conducted extensive empirical research across the Middle East, Western Balkans, and South East Asia, revealing how international security practices are assembled and contested in diverse geopolitical contexts. Her methodology bridges critical security studies with practice-based approaches, focusing on the everyday operations of intervention rather than just formal policies.

Dr. Tholens is currently finalizing a monograph titled "Assembling Security Assistance: Knowledge, Materiality and Networks of a Global Practice" for Oxford University Press, alongside pioneering work on "Ignorance and Interventions" that investigates non-knowledge, secrecy, and ignorance in contemporary intervention practices—a novel research direction challenging conventional understandings of international interventions.

• Leverhulme Trust's International Academic Fellowship (2020-2021)
• ERC-funded Borderlands project researcher
• Co-editor of "Resisting Europe: Practices of Contestation in the Mediterranean Middle East" (University of Michigan Press, 2022)

As a dedicated mentor, Dr. Tholens supervises PhD students including Miranda Loli. Her scholarly contributions span top journals including International Affairs, Journal of International Relations and Development, and Small Wars & Insurgencies. Her work demonstrates consistent evolution from examining specific case studies to developing broader theoretical frameworks for understanding security assistance as a global practice, with increasing attention to postcolonial dimensions and the role of ignorance in international interventions.