About

I am Senior Lecturer in International Relations (Associate Professor) in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, UK. My research broadly centres on the politics and ethics of security, with particular interests in energy security, climate politics, and China. I completed my PhD in International Relations at the University of Birmingham in 2014, which focused on the politics of energy security in the United States and China.

My research currently centres on Chinese security politics, exploring changes that have taken place since Xi Jinping took office and placing these in historical context. I am particularly interested in interactions between elite-level security-making and everyday experience. This work draws on extensive fieldwork in China, which was supported by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, titled ‘Securing China: Understanding security politics beyond the West’. As part of this research, I have been Associate-in-Research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, and also spent time as a visiting fellow at the University of Copenhagen and the Swedish Institute for International Affairs. This research brings together a deep empirical analysis of contemporary Chinese security politics with debates on how to research security politics in a more ‘global’ way, drawing on postcolonial IR to develop an agenda for Worlding Security Studies. It will be published as a monograph with Oxford University Press in January 2027, titled Securing China: Worlding Security Studies.

I also published a monograph with Oxford University Press in 2016, based on my work on energy security. This is titled The Energy Security Paradox: Rethinking Energy (In)security in the United States and China. I have co-edited a book on Ethical Security Studies: A New Research Agenda, with Anthony Burke, and have published research articles in a number of leading academic journals, including European Journal of International Relations, International Political Sociology, Review of International Studies, the Journal of International Relations and Development, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, and WIREs Climate Change.

I regularly present my research at major international conferences in the UK, Europe, North America, and Asia, and I have given a number of longer invited lectures about different aspects of my research at institutions around the world. I regularly engage with policy-communities as part of my work, primarily in the UK and NATO.

My research has been supported by external funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Academy of Finland.

Follow the links at the top to access more information about my research, publications, teaching or activities.

Media or policy inquiries: please email j.nyman@sheffield.ac.uk