Mr Luke Stephens
Job Title
PhD Student
Research interests
Research interests
Substantive Focus
International Relations and foreign policy of East and Southeast Asia, with emphasis on narratives and identity in shaping state action and political meaning;
Singaporean domestic politics, civil society, and state–society relations;
British foreign policy and political history;
European Union external relations and international role conception.
Theory and Concepts
Constructivist and post-structuralist approaches to International Relations;
Narratives, identity, norms, and values in international and transnational politics.
Methods and Approaches
Textual and interpretive methods, particularly critical discourse analysis, narrative analysis, and frame analysis;
Social-computational research methods in the social sciences;
Natural language processing for political and policy analysis;
Large language models in social science research;
Social media analysis and digital political communication.
Background
Luke Stephens is currently a PhD student based in the School of Social and Political Studies (SPS) at the University of Edinburgh. His thesis is focused on exploring British foreign policy and national identity, examining how the latter has impacted the shift from 'East of Suez' retrenchment to international re-engagement in the age of 'Global Britain'.
Publications
Stephens, L. (2025). Contentious Acts in Controlled Spaces: A Protest Event Analysis of Singaporean Demonstrations. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 55(1), 50–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2023.2252427
Rogers, L., & Stephens, L. (2025). The once and future tree: Ontic space, the Anthropocene, and the Sycamore Gap. Global Studies Quarterly, 5(2), ksaf047. https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksaf047
Stephens, L. (2022). An overview of using the Twitter API for data collection. In M. Currie (Ed.), SAGE Research Methods: Doing research online. SAGE Publications, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529609295
Education
Politics PhD - University of Edinburgh
East Asian Relations MSc - University of Edinburgh
Politics & International Relations BSc - University of Bristol
Membership of Research Groups
International Relations Research Group - University of Edinburgh
Foreign Policy Research Group - University of Edinburgh
Invited Lectures & Presentations
Contentious Acts in Controlled Spaces: A Singaporean Protest Event Analysis - Invited Speaker to International Relations Research Group (University of Edinburgh) - January 2021