Dr Noran Fouad

Noran joined Manchester Metropolitan University in September 2022 as Lecturer in Digital Politics at the Department of History, Politics, and Philosophy. She is also currently the Research Degree Lead for Politics and the Departmental Year Tutor for foundation year (pastoral care). Prior to MMU, she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, where she conducted public policy research on cybersecurity governance, with particular focus on managing cyber risks in the education sector, as well as developing risk-based approaches to cybersecurity in low- and middle-income countries. As part of her role, she co-designed and co-taught multiple executive education programmes to policymakers and postgraduate courses on governing digital transformation and cybersecurity.

Noran completed her PhD in International Relations at the University of Sussex in 2021, funded by the university’s Chancellor’s International Research Scholarship. Her PhD thesis entitled ‘Entropic Security: Information, Materiality, and Cybersecurity’ examined the socio-political construction of cybersecurity through an in-depth analysis of the peculiarities and agency of digital information, by drawing upon literatures in the philosophy of information and software studies, and through a detailed analysis of cybersecurity discourses in the USA. She is currently working on publishing the project as a book with Routledge, in the Studies in Conflict, Technology and Security series.

Noran holds a BSc and a MSc degree in Political Science from Cairo University, where she also worked as a Teaching Assistant and Assistant Lecturer of Political Science; teaching multiple undergraduate courses including: Theory of International Relations, Introduction to Political Science, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Western Political Systems. During that period, she conducted research on Middle East politics, cybersecurity, internet governance, digital activism, and several other topics related to digital technologies. She was also an Academic Assistant and Executive Editor of two academic journals published by the university.

Noran’s research generally lies at the intersection of technology, security, and governance, with a particular focus on cybersecurity. She is interested in studying the security of the everyday and the ostensibly ‘mundane’ in cybersecurity; the co-production of cybersecurity policies and practices between human and non-human agency; and developing interdisciplinary theoretical and conceptual frameworks to cybersecurity that engage with questions and debates in other sub-fields of International Relations and Security Studies. Her research thus far has been informed by critical security studies, new materialism and posthumanism, the philosophy of information, software studies, securitisation, and risk theories. Currently, she is working on exploring issues at the intersection of cybersecurity, biosecurity, and global health.