Patrick Weir

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College: College of Life and Environmental Sciences
Discipline: Geography
Department: Geography

After completing my undergraduate studies in Philosophy and Politics at the University of Glasgow, I went on to study for an MLitt in International Security Studies at the University of St Andrews, and was awarded distinction for my dissertation on the textual origins of Western foreign policy towards Rwanda during the genocide in 1994. The dissertation argued that a central component of Western prevarication, inaction and dismissal of the genocide as "tribal violence" rested on the persistence of colonial knowledge architectures relating to Sub-Saharan Africa. This, it suggested, in conjunction with the European discourses of genocide based around Holocaust exceptionalism, led Western foreign policy makers to reject the adoption of a genocide discourse in Rwanda, believing the Hutu government incapable of the necessary governmental, intellectual and administrative capacity or efficiency to organise such a project. In 2010 I received an AHRC block grant partnership award with the University of Exeter to continue my postgraduate studies.