I am an international relations scholar specializing in decolonial and feminist theorizations of war, security, and interventionism. I'm the author of The Freedom of Security: Governing Canada in the Age of Counterterrorism (UBC Press) and co-editor of War, Police and Assemblages of Intervention (with Jan Bachmann and Caroline Holmqvist). My recent work focuses on feminist foreign policy, the global making of Canadian police, and sexual exploitation in UN police peacekeeping.  I am the past president of the International Studies Association-Canada section and the current editor of Critical Studies on Security. @cdbell.bsky.social / @colleenbellisma

I regularly teach: 

POLS 869: Theories of International Relations

POLS 410: The Politics of Security

POLS 364: International Terrorism 

POLS 370: War, Militarism and Society

POLS 110: Global Issues

Books and Edited Collections

Bachmann, J, C. Bell, C. Holmqvist, Eds War, Police and Assemblages of Intervention. London: Routledge.

Bell, C. The Freedom of Security: Governing Canada in the Age of Counterterrorism. Nelson: University of British Columbia Press.

Selected Papers

Bell, C. and N. Wegner. 2025. "Feminist Foreign Policy as a Case of Governance Feminism: Neoliberalism, Militarism and Women as 'Agents of Change.'" International Studies Review, 27.1 

Bell, C. and C. Holmqvist. 2024 “Assemblages.” In Handbook on International Political Sociology, eds. Stacie Goddard, George Lawson and Ole Jacob Sending. Oxford University Press. 

Bell, C., N. Lange and C. McRorie. 2024. “Our State/Ourselves: Discourses on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Police Peacekeeping." International Peacekeeping, 575-598.   

Pingeot. L & C. Bell. 2022. "Recentring the coloniality of global policing," Third World Quarterly 43(10), 2488–2508.

Deonandan, K and C. Bell. 2019. "Discipline and Punish: Gendered Dimensions of Violence in Extractive Development." Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 31.1: 24-57. 

Bell, C. 2018. "Celebrity Powers and Powers of War: The rise of the COINdinistas in American Popular Media," Critical Military Studies 4.3: 244-263. 

Bell, C. and K. Schreiner. 2017. "Settler Colonialism and the ‘Civilizing’ Mission of Canada’s Mounties: Re-thinking Police Power in International Relations," International Journal 73.1: 111-128.

Bell, C. 2016. “Biometrics, Racism, and Counterinsurgency in the Colonial Present” in Reconfiguring Intervention: Complexity, Resilience, and the 'Local Turn' in Counterinsurgent Warfare, edited by Louise Wiuff Moe and Markus-Michael Muller. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Bell, C. 2013. “Grey’s Anatomy Goes South: Global racism and suspect identities in the colonial present,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 38.4: 487-508. https://www.jstor.org/stable/canajsocicahican.38.4.465. 

Bell, C. 2012. “Hybrid Warfare and its Metaphors,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights 3.2: 225-247. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hum/summary/v003/3.2.bell.html.

Bell, C. 2012. “Insurgency and the Allegory of Medical Intervention: Why Metaphors Matter,” International Political Sociology 6.1. Forum on the International Political Sociology of Health and Medicine.

Bell, C. 2011. “Civilianising Warfare: Ways of War and Peace in Modern Counterinsurgency” Journal of International Relations and Development 14.3: 309-332. http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jird/journal/v14/n3/abs/jird201016a.html. 

international theories and global politics, war and security studies, terrorism and counterterrorism, security-development nexus, political theory, Western intervention

counterterrorism critical security studies critical war studies development-security nexus foucault international political sociology political violence racism surveillance war

BA Honours University of Calgary

MA, PhD York University

SSHRC Post-doctoral Fellow University of Bristol and University of Toronto