Research

The pluralism through which members of the chair group approach and understand security, peace, and conflict is a strength of the chair group. The group approaches issues of war and peace, security policies, diplomacy, and conflict management within their historical context, while emphasizing the normative and institutional orders in which they occur. Members of the group, in various ways, challenge state-centric and standard divisions between public and private, treating these categories as historical contingencies rather than as ontological starting points. In this sense, the research of many members reflects an intellectual debt to the emergence of Critical Security Studies and the Copenhagen School’s framework for analysis.

The chair group members have demonstrable regional expertise in Africa (Central Africa and West Africa), the Americas (South America and the United States), the Arctic, East Asia (Northeast Asia and Southwest Asia), and Europe (including Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea region). Thematically, chair group members focus on substantive research topics such as Arctic security, citizenship and systematic racism, climate change and energy security, global health, gendered impacts of security policy, militarization, peacebuilding, natural resource governance & conflict, urban geopolitics, and visual security.

Selection of funded research projects by staff

Agha Bayramov
Visiting research fellowship at Center for Eastern European Studies (University of Zurich) (2022)
Project title: Energy Security, Climate Change and War

The main aim of this project is to explore the potential role of Azeri natural gas in meeting European Union energy security needs. Specifically, it seeks to ascertain the consequences for Azerbaijan’s energy exports should Russia turn off the taps or the EU stop importing Russian fossil fuels. Could Azerbaijan help boost European energy security?

David Shim
Security Imaginaries of Climate Movements (SECIMA) (2022-2023)

How do climate movements imagine climate futures and what is the role of images in this process? The project examines the security imaginaries of climate movements and their underlying forms of visuality through participatory visual research methods. SECIMA explores new methodological pathways: activists from climate movements such as Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion take part in the project as citizen scientists. They are involved in the collection and interpretation of visual data and, therefore, play an essential role in addressing the project’s research questions. SECIMA is jointly funded by the University of Groningen and the University of Hamburg and led by Delf Rothe (ISFH) and David Shim (IRSS).

David Shim
Visual Narratives of Climate Change (2021/2022)

This project was facilitated by a Senior Research Fellowship of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research in Duisburg, Germany. I have examined the visual politics of legitimation of transnational environmental movements. In particular, I have investigated how visual narratives are central to, and productive of, strategies of legitimation in the contentious politics of climate change.

Ongoing PhD Projects

Barbara Gruber – The Psychologization of Security through Resilience (Supervision: Caitlyn Ryan & Jaap de Wilde).
Yaruslava Marusyk – The Role of the EU and Russian Norms, Values and Principles in Energy Security and Energy Transition Discourses? (Supervision: Jaap de Wilde).
Annisa Paramita Wiharani – International Consequences of Decentralisation in Indonesia Regarding Environmental Policies at the Municipal Level (Supervision: Jaap de Wilde & Ron Holzhacker).
Magdalena König – Understanding EU-Western Balkans Integration in Counter-Terrorism from a Perspective of Collective Securitisation (Supervision: Nadine Voelkner, Senka Neumann-Stanivukovic & Jaap de Wilde)
Chris Vloedbeld – The Security Reflex in Counterterrorism (Supervision: Jaap de Wilde and Lucas Van Milders)
Ole Martin Stormoen - Mechanisms of continuity and change in Norway’s strategic culture (In cooperation with NUPI, Oslo; Supervision: Jaap de Wilde and Karsten Friis)

Completed PhD Projects

Stef Wittendorp, Ordering Terror, Terrorizing Order: Governmentality, Counterterrorism and the European Community/European Union, 1972-2016 (Supervisor: Jaap de Wilde & Andrej Zwitter) - finalized in 2022.
Erdal Tatli, The History of Turkey’s Civil-Military Relations: Lessons for the European Union (Supervisor: Jaap de Wilde & Arjan van den Assem) - finalized in 2022.
Eric Cezne, Assembling the South–South through Extraction: Mozambique, the Brazilian Mining Giant Vale S.A., and the Renewed Tropical Connection across the South Atlantic (Supervisor: Jaap de Wilde & Jana Hönke, University of Bayreuth) - finalized in 2021. The dissertation got a cum laude, and was nominated by the Board of the Faculty of Arts for the Wieringa-Rengerink prize of best UG Thesis in 2021.

Luca Franza, The Political-Economic Dimension of Transformations in EU-Russia Gas Trade Mechanisms (Supervisor: Coby van der Linde & Jaap de Wilde) – finalized in 2020.
Agha Bayramov, Constructive Competition or Destructive Conflict in the Caspian Sea Region? (Supervisor: Christoph Humrich & Jaap de Wilde) – finalized in 2020.
Mustafa Sezal, Origins of Differentiation in Critical Security Schools: A Philosophic-Genealogical Search for Emancipatory Roots (Supervision: Jaap de Wilde in cooperation with Burak Bilgehan Özpek & Hakan Övünç Ongur, TOBB University of Economics & Technology, Ankara) – finalized in 2019.
Elisabeth Schweiger, Listening to Silence: ‘Targeted Killing’ and the Politics of Silence in Customary International Law (Supervisor: Xavier Guillaume & Jaap de Wilde) – finalized in 2018.
Karsten Friis, Military-Civilian Relations in Interventions (Supervisor: Jaap de Wilde & Iver B. Neumann, NUPI, Oslo) – finalized in 2018.
Kars de Bruijne – Ex-Post Negotiated Settlement in Civil Win Slovenia and Sierra Leone (Supervision: Jaap de Wilde & Arjan van den Assem ) – finalized in 2016.
Johannes Kester – Securing abundance: The politics of energy security (Supervision: Jaap de Wilde & Benjamin Herborth) – finalized in 2016.
Mohammadbagher Forough – Transnational Public Spheres: A Spatial Perspective (Supervision: Jaap de Wilde & Benjamin Herborth) – finalized in 2015.
Senka Neumann-Stanivukovic – Europeanization: A Post-Structuralist Approach (Supervision: Peter Volten & Jaap de Wilde) – finalized in 2014.
Tim Boersma – European Energy Security in the Gas Sector (Supervision: Jaap de Wilde & Catrinus Jepma , Energy Delta Institute) – finalized in 2013.
Cecile de Milliano – Adolescent Resilience to Flooding in Indonesia, Burkina Faso and Bolivia (Supervision: Joost Herman & Jaap de Wilde) – finalized in 2012.

Please see the individual staff pages for the full range of research activities that we are engaged in.