Lena is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Sociology.
Her current research addresses the persistence of US empire in the present through analysis of the historically changing functions and forms of socio-political categories foundational to its existence: namely, race, gender, and the human. Using recent US military practice and technological development -- including drone warfare, increasing use of Special Operations Forces, and military medical technologies -- as a way into understanding US military imaginations of the the future of war and empire, this research theorizes the importance of an extractive military "posthumanity" to the direction of these.
Lena holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, an MSc from Royal Holloway, University of London, and a BA from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa.
