Associated Doctoral Researcher
Vita
Since February 2021, Oliver Merschel has been working at the IFSH as researcher. He is part of the project "Solidarity through security? Discourses, interactions and practices of European cohesion in the field of security" (ZUSE) which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Prior to that, he studied political science with a special focus on International Relations in Hamburg and Aarhus. He received the degrees Bachelor of Arts (2018) and Master of Arts (2020) from the University of Hamburg. During his studies, he furthermore worked between 2016 and 2019 as tutor and student assistant at the Chair of Antje Wiener (Political Science, especially Global Governance, University of Hamburg) as well as at the cluster of excellence “Climate, Climatic Change, and Society” (CLICCS).
PhD Project
Oliver’s PhD project investigates the role of Brexit for the (re-)production, contestation and potential crumbling of the EU’s ontological security. It goes beyond both macro-level diagnoses of the EU as an “anxious community” and beyond individual (political) psychology to focus on ontological security on the intermediate level of the EU’s administrative ‘engine room’. More specifically, it focuses on the narrative practices that engage with the future of cooperation between the EU and the UK especially in the highly relevant and contentious field of security. Drawing on the observation that the EU increasingly narrates its self-image based on its supposed role as a “security provider”, the future of security cooperation after Brexit seems to gain special importance for the EU’s ontological security. The project aims to contribute to the empirical understanding of the EU’s internal administrative handling of Brexit as well to conceptual debates on the question of the inclusive or exclusive character of producing ontological security.
Publications
Merschel, Oliver. 2021.
Determinanten der Sicherheitsarchitektur. Oliver Merschel über Ursula Schröder, The Organization of European Security Governance.
In: 100 Jahre Politikwissenschaft in Hamburg, Bielefeld: transcript. DOI: 10.14361/9783839453346-003.
Bartenstein, Aline, Hendrik Hegemann, Oliver Merschel. 2021.
„Sicherheitsunion“ EU: Zukunft gestalten statt Status quo erhalten.
Policy Brief 6/2021. Hamburg: IFSH. DOI: 10.25592/ifsh-policy-brief-0621.
Contact
merschel"AT"ifsh.de