Bill Flanik is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and Intenrational Relations in the School of Social Sciences, where he also serves as Course Director for the MA of International Relations. He has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Virginia Commonwealth University in the United States and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, Canada. His Ph.D. thesis, completed in 2013, shows how U.S. advocates of strategic missile defense prevailed by wielding metaphors of "shields," "rogues," "visions," and "journeys" to transform a dry, technocratic policy debate into a referendum on American exceptionalism, survival, and progress. After completing his doctorate, Flanik taught at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and Colorado Mesa University in the United States. He has taught a variety of subjects in comparative politics, peace and conflict studies, and international relations and published research on teaching and learning, foreign policy, and discourse analysis.