Meet the new Postgraduate Network (PGN) committee 2026-27

We're delighted to introduce you to the new PGN committee for the next academic year. 

We welcome back former Vice Chair, Iris Magne, as the new Chair. We also welcome new committee members Ipek Nil Ozat - Vice Chair, Jenni Rall - Communications Officer and Genevieve Gunn - Events and Elections Officer. You can find out more about them below.

Last, but not least, we thank outgoing Chair, Konstantinos Manakos, for his hard work.

Iris Magne - Chair 

Iris is a PhD Candidate in Russian and Eurasian Studies at King’s College London, where her research explores vaccine diplomacy, soft power, and great power competition across Cold War, post-Cold War, and contemporary global health contexts. Her work is interdisciplinary, drawing on methods and concepts from International Relations, Global Health, Political Economy, and History. She is a researcher on the Politics of Grievance and Democratic Governance (PLEDGE) project, funded by a Horizon Europe grant (EU & UKRI), and has also conducted research projects at Columbia University and London Metropolitan University. She holds a BA in History and International Relations from King’s College London and an MSc in International Relations from the LSE, where she focused on the instrumentalisation of health in Soviet and Russian foreign policy. Alongside academia, she has gained professional experience at the House of Lords, as well as at the French Embassies and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Ipek Nil Ozat - Vice Chair

İpek Nil Ozat is a third-year PhD candidate in International Relations at Bilkent University. Her doctoral research examines the transformation of militarism in Turkey, with a particular focus on the defence industry and the ways in which militarism is reproduced and rearticulated through changing conceptions of the international. She has contributed to research projects involving archival research and qualitative-computational text analysis and political ethnographic research, including a TÜBİTAK-funded project on Turkey’s participation in global norm processes. Prior to her doctoral studies, she gained professional experience at the Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Treasury and Finance, where she participated in a project management programme. Nil holds an MSc in Eurasian Studies from Middle East Technical University, where she wrote her thesis on a critical geopolitical analysis of the Fergana Valley, and a BA in International Relations from Hacettepe University, where she also completed a minor in Philosophy. Her broader research interests include militarism and militarisation, postcolonial and feminist approaches to security, and critical geopolitics.

Jenni Rall - Communications Officer

Jenni is a first-year PhD researcher in International Relations at the University of Passau and a scholar of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. Her research examines silence as a political and discursive practice in responses to mass atrocities, focusing on the cases of Gaza and Sudan. Drawing on critical constructivist approaches, she explores how silence in foreign policy discourse shapes political narratives, normative commitments, and international responses to atrocity crimes. She holds a BSc in Psychology from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg and an MA in International Cultural and Business Studies from the University of Passau. Prior to starting her PhD, she worked in educational cooperation and cultural relations at the Goethe-Institut London, where she organised conferences and events, built partnerships across the education sector, and led youth exchange programmes. Her broader research interests include foreign policy analysis, human rights, atrocity prevention, feminist IR, and peace and conflict studies.

Genevieve Gunn - Events and Elections Officer

Genevieve is a second-year PhD student in Politics and International Relations at Cardiff University, where she researches the relationship between neoliberalism, far-right politics and gender. Her thesis specifically examines how gendered discourses, hierarchies and identities are mediated within UK and US breakfast/morning television shows. Prior to starting her PhD, Genevieve achieved a first-class BScEcon in Politics and International Relations, and a distinction MA in International Relations from Cardiff University. She currently holds an ESRC funded studentship to undertake her PhD research from the Wales Graduate School of Social Sciences (WGSSS).