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About Jessica
Jessica Kirk is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University and an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Queensland, completed between 2016 and 2020. Prior to her current position, Kirk was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Governance and Public Policy at Griffith University. Her main academic specialty is the global politics of health, with a focus on the links between health and security, the contested role of expertise in health emergency responses, and challenges posed by mis- and disinformation. Her research interests include global health, non-traditional security issues and critical theoretical approaches to security, the politics of expertise and knowledge, misinformation and disinformation, and emergency response.
Kirk's scholarship has significantly influenced the fields of international relations and global health security through high-impact publications and funded projects. Key works include her monograph More than a Health Crisis: Securitization and the US Response to the 2013–2016 Ebola Outbreak, published by MIT Press in 2023; 'Infodemic, ignorance, or imagination? The problem of misinformation in health emergencies' in International Political Sociology (2024); 'Bordering: Australia’s policy to border during COVID-19' in Political Studies (2024); 'The politics of exceptionalism: securitization and COVID-19' in Global Studies Quarterly (2021, 62 citations); and 'From threat to risk? Exceptionalism and logics of health security' in International Studies Quarterly (2020, 27 citations). As a DECRA Fellow, she is the Primary Chief Investigator on the ARC project 'Improving the global management of health (mis)information' (2025–2028) and a Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery Project 'The politics of expertise during COVID-19' (2022–2025), collaborating with leading scholars such as S. E. Davies, C. Howard, C. Wenham, J. Youde, and R. Irwin. Her research contributes to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 3 (Good Health and Well-being), 10 (Reduced Inequalities), 13 (Climate Action), and 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions). Kirk also coordinates the unit APG5236 Global Policy Challenge at Monash University.
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