Staff Profile

Background

I joined the School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology in early 2017. Before moving to Newcastle I was a PhD student in Geography at the University of British Columbia.

Research interests

I am interested in war and (para)military violence, conflict medicine and forced displacement, the geographies of international law and the contemporary Middle East and North Africa.

I am currently working on two interdisciplinary projects. The first examines the involvement of military lawyers in aerial targeting operations carried out by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Israeli military in Gaza and the West Bank. My first book, The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel and Juridical Warfare is published by Oxford University Press (November 2020). It draws on several years of fieldwork and over 50 interviews with US and Israeli military lawyers. It argues that international law has become part of the very fabric of later modern war and that US and Israeli military lawyers play a surprisingly crucial role in planning and executing a wide range of lethal and non-lethal military operations.

The second research investigates access to treatment for the sick and injured in a region where medical and healthcare infrastructures have been destroyed (often deliberately) by military and paramilitary violence. It focuses on three ongoing conflicts in the Middle East - Gaza, Syria and Iraq - and traces the systems of casualty evacuation and medical care that have emerged within and across borders in the region. 

Areas of expertise

• Later modern war
• Conflict and displacement
• Conflict and healthcare
• The contemporary Middle East
• Geographies of international law

Google scholar: Click here.

Research interests

I am interested in war and (para)military violence, conflict medicine and forced displacement, the geographies of international law and the contemporary Middle East and North Africa. I am currently working on two interdisciplinary projects.

The first examines the involvement of military lawyers in aerial targeting operations carried out by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Israeli military in Gaza and the West Bank. My first book, The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel and Juridical Warfare is published by Oxford University Press (November 2020). It draws on several years of fieldwork and over 50 interviews with US and Israeli military lawyers. It argues that international law has become part of the very fabric of later modern war and that US and Israeli military lawyers play a surprisingly crucial role in planning and executing a wide range of lethal and non-lethal military operations. 

The second research investigates access to treatment for the sick and injured in a region where medical and healthcare infrastructures have been destroyed (often deliberately) by military and paramilitary violence. It focuses on three ongoing conflicts in the Middle East - Gaza, Syria and Iraq - and traces the systems of casualty evacuation and medical care that have emerged within and across borders in the region. 

I am the Degree Program Director (DPD) of the M.A. in Human Geography.

I teach across a variety of topics and subject including war and conflict, migration and displacement in the Middle East and Europe, international law and the laws of war, cities under siege, geopolitics, political geography, the Cyprus question, Palestine-Israel , and film and documentary, among other things. 

I currently teach:

GEO1010 Interconnected World (Lecturer)

GEO2047 Political Geography (Lecturer)

GEO2139 Exploring Everyday Political Geographies in a Divided City: Nicosia (boots on the ground)

GEO3041 Geographies of Film, representation and critical spectatorship (Lecturer)

GEOG3102 Geopolitics (Module Leader and Lecturer)

GEO3145 Humanitarianism: Representation, Intervention and Rescue (Lecturer)

GEO8017 Human Geography: Concepts in Action (Lecturer)

• Articles

  • Jones C, Shah N. Wars with and for humanity. Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law 2023, 24, 143–164.
  • Jeffrey A, Jones C. Space, abandonment, closure, and performance: Writing about the relationship between law and war. Dialogues in Human Geography 2024, 130(1), 167-171.
  • Jones C. Legal advice and United States aerial targeting operations. The Military Law and the Law of War Review 2022, 60(1), 3-30.
  • Jones C. Gaza and the Great March of Return: Enduring Violence and Spaces of Wounding. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2023, 48(2), 249-262.
  • Jones CA. Lawfare and the juridification of late modern war. Progress in Human Geography 2016, 40(2), 221-239.
  • Jones CA, Smith MD. War/Law/Space: Notes toward a legal geography of war. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2015, 33(4), 581 – 591.
  • Jones CA. Frames of law: targeting advice and operational law in the Israeli military. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2015, 33(4), 676-696.
  • Jones C. Shooting Gaza: Israel’s visual war. Human Geography 2011, 4(1).

• Authored Book

  • Jones C. The War Lawyers: the United States, Israel and Juridical Warfare. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

• Book Chapters

  • Jones C. Operationalising international law: from Vietnam to Gaza. In: Cuddy, Brian and Victor Kattan, ed. Making Endless War: The Vietnam and Arab-Israeli Conflicts in the History of International Law. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022, pp.33. In Press.
  • Jones C, Richardson MJ. Justice. In: The Newcastle Social Geographies Collective, ed. Social Geographies: An Introduction. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020, pp.79-88.
  • Jones CA. Researching the intersections between war, law and military geography. In: Woodward, Rachel, ed. A Research Agenda for Military Geography. Edward Elgar, 2019, pp.84-99.
  • Jones CA. Traveling law: Targeted Killing, Lawfare and the Deconstruction of the Battlefield. In: Alex Lubin and Marwan M. Kraidy, ed. American Studies Encounters the Middle East. University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

• Online Publications

  • Jones Craig. Legal advice in modern aerial warfare. West Point, NY: Lieber Institute, United States West Point Military Academy, 2021. Available at: https://lieber.westpoint.edu/legal-advice-modern-aerial-warfare/.
  • Jones Craig. In good faith: legal advice during aerial targeting in urban areas. Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 2021. Available at: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2021/05/04/in-good-faith/.

• Reviews

  • Jones Craig. The politics of humane violence. Los Angeles Review of Books 2021.
  • Jones C. War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lutz, Catherine and Mazzarino, Andrea, editors [Book review]. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 2020, 34(3), e73-e75.
  • Jones CA. Forsaking the civilian. Human Geography 2012, 5(3), 103-112.