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The development of an energy role for the European Union has been a divisive area of EU policy. The competing interests and differing perspectives of member states, EU institutions and commercial energy players have hampered the development of downstream European internal energy markets, obstructed the construction of mid-stream transportation routes that would diversify European energy supplies and hindered the EU’s ability to ‘speak with one voice’ towards major suppliers. However, despite widespread scholarly coverage of EU energy issues, the tri-lateral upstream interaction between European institutions, member states and energy companies in the countries where oil and gas are produced has received less academic attention. This thesis seeks to address this lacuna in the literature through an examination of upstream intra-EU cooperation in the Caspian region. This study finds that the EU’s upstream oil and gas policy in the Caspian is, relatively speaking, more coherent than many other areas of European energy policy. In the Caspian, European convergence forms, in particular, around the EU’s collective political risk mitigation and market facilitation role. Employing an interdisciplinary International Political Economy approach, the thesis examines how the EU’s model of European energy supply entails dependence on the commercial sector which compels political actors to support companies in strategic regions through milieu-shaping energy governance and commercial (energy) diplomacy. The thesis demonstrates how European actors share similar upstream risk perceptions, promote overlapping security and market-based policy perspectives and how both member states and companies increasingly encourage an EU foreign policy role in meeting these upstream challenges. In doing so, this research examines the EU’s risk-mitigating external energy governance, the EU’s diplomatic practice in upstream energy and the dynamics of European politico-commercial interaction in the Caspian - core aspects of an under-researched, but ultimately increasingly cooperative, part of EU external energy policy.

This thesis aims to contribute to our understanding of how ISIS's gender-based violence against Yazidi women has been represented; specifically, it contrasts major international newspapers' portrayals of Yazidi women's experiences with those of the women themselves. Violence against women is not uncommon; however, how women from the Global South who have experienced violence are represented in the West is often rooted in traditional gender stereotypes, and, given the dominance of Western media, this is how most people around the world learn about women from the Global South. Drawing on feminist security and transnational feminist literature, the main aim is to critically analyse the differences in the portrayal of women's victimhood and survivorship by exploring representation from two different sources: (i) newspaper analysis, and (ii) interview analysis. Such an approach allows us to better understand the complexities of women's experiences of violence as well as examine how the gendered and orientalist representations of violence against women render some experiences visible while others remain hidden. Existing research on the representation of Yazidi women who survived ISIS has primarily focused on the sexual violence they experienced and is based on an examination of a short period between 2014 - 2016, when ISIS controlled a significant swath of territory in Iraq and Syria. 2014-2016 also marks the period when articles on the rape and mistreatment of Yazidi women dominated the international media. These representations in the global media and academia, however, have failed to reveal the various dimensions of violence experienced by the Yazidi women, particularly following ISIS's physical defeat in 2019. Few studies have investigated Yazidi women's current situation in the post-ISIS era. This thesis, therefore, addresses the research question: 'How are Yazidi women's experiences of violence represented?' to fill this gap in the literature and provide a more holistic assessment of these women's experiences, drawing on interview and newspapers data. This research project adds to the body of knowledge on victimhood and survivorship narratives regarding women in the -'Global South'- who have experienced gender-based violence. The results indicate that while women who experienced mistreatment because of armed conflict are not merely passive victims, nor are they active survivors. The results reveal both these women's agency in their victimisation and their victimisation in their survivorship narratives. Despite the brutal violence experienced by Yazidi women due to ISIS, these women demonstrated a significant level of agency in enduring and surviving their captivity. Moreover, post- ISIS, many Yazidi women continue to be victimised in their own communities by different types of violence and intolerance. The findings of this thesis provide an in- depth analysis of these issues and propose a new understanding of Yazidi women's' victimhood and survivorship narratives to replace the highly gendered narratives adopted by the Western media.

Research generated by Prevent is abundant. The majority of studies focus on the delivery of Prevent as a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) initiative but rarely question the methodological pretences that underpin its practices. There is however mounting pressure from the public sphere and sections of the research community that is casting doubt on Prevent’s effectiveness as a policy as well as its potentially harmful effects on the vulnerable communities it professes to serve. This qualitative investigation evaluates the implementation of Prevent and its statutory duty at the community level, drawing on the experiences of Local Authority (LA) Prevent managers, education providers, NGOs with a vested interest in Prevent and community advocates and Community Based Organisations (CBOs). It utilises the Foucauldian concept of governmentality as an explanatory tool to navigate the interplay between the bureaucratic, economic and ideological suppositions that facilitate Prevent, whilst also drawing upon Bourdieu’s methodological framework regarding the educational field to explore the paradox generated by Foucault’s concept of governmentality in practice. This study argues that Prevent is symptomatic of neo- liberal mechanisms of power that are primarily focused on generating large scale, quantitative data to answer societal questions only smaller, more focused qualitative studies can hope to solve.