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Biography

Pauline Blistène is a Lecturer in Strategic Communication at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Her research and teaching focus on spy fiction, the theoretical foundations of intelligence (secrecy, reason of state), disinformation, as well as the French intelligence community. She is Research Coordinator of the King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence (KCSI).

She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where her doctoral dissertation received the Grand Prix of France’s Intelligence Academy and the Bastien Irondelle Prize of the Association for War and Strategic Studies. In 2019, she received the Best Student Paper award from the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA). She has published widely, including in Intelligence and National Security and the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, and is completing her first book, Hidden in Plain Sight: Spy Fiction, Secrecy and Democracy (under contract with Princeton University Press).

Previously, Pauline was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the ERC-funded DEMOSERIES project at the Sorbonne and a former Research Associate at the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School. She has held visiting positions at the University of Cambridge and Columbia University. Alongside academia, she produced the acclaimed podcast ‘Espion, une vie sous légende’, exploring the realities of espionage through the lens of the French hit series The Bureau. Before academia, she worked as a journalist for the national radio station France Culture.

Research interests

  • Spy fiction
  • Public perceptions of intelligence
  • Secrecy
  • Disinformation
  • Conspiracy & conspiracy theories
  • France & French intelligence
  • Influence

Media

Print
25th Feb 2025

Engelsberg Ideas Review: Inside the early modern spy’s toolkit

Meticulous archival research has shed light on the various tricks and tools used by spies in early modern…
Podcast
13th Feb 2025

Engelsberg Ideas Podcast: The myth and magic of spy fiction

Are we living through a golden age of espionage drama? And what do spy stories tell us about…
Print
18th Oct 2023

Publications

Chapter
1st Jan 2025

New Chapter: ISIS Attacks Paris

Blistene, P., Contemporary Intelligence Warning Cases: Learning from Successes and Failures. Grønning, B and Stenslie, S. (eds.). Edinburgh University Press

What can intelligence producers and users learn from contemporary intelligence warning cases to anticipate, prepare for, mitigate and…