Research

A first focus is on emerging landscapes of security and international peace orders. The graduate programme Democratising Security in Turbulent Times, funded by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg as part of a state-wide research funding scheme (Landesforschungsförderung) from 2020-2024 explores the challenges of democratic security politics in times of fundamental transformations. In the project Conflict and Cooperation at the Climate-Security Nexus (CLICCS B3) we contribute to the cluster of excellence on Climate, Climatic Change and Society at the University of Hamburg with an analysis of the multifaceted interactions between climate change and dynamics of insecurity and resilience. The project Situational Awareness: Sensing Security in the City, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), investigates contemporary security strategies against the backdrop of unforeseeable dangers such as terrorist attacks on urban grounds. The project International Police Missions: Foreign Experts in Conflict-Affected States, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), sheds light on the role of police experts as global governors.

A second focus concerns the material and spatial politics of violence and its legacies. One relevant body of work explores the politics of ecology and the environment – especially in the context of extractivism and disaster preparedness – as a foremost avenue where systemic injustices resulting from the violence of colonialism and the nation-state play out and are contested today. Emerging research explores the embodied and emplaced implications of security-oriented governance of faith-based minorities in Europe, and management of nuclear disarmament and the waste associated with it. Another line of inquiry examines the politics of violence in relation to border governance, exploring how security-focused border governance facilitates violence and insecurity across different sites. Furthermore, we are concerned with the destruction and the reconstruction of architecture in the Anthropocene, i.e. what it means for the self-understanding of societies and the emergence of communities.

A third focus is on the analysis of narratives of insecurity – and the radicalisation of public spheres. Works revolve around apocalyptic narratives articulated in global climate activism and – in very different ways – in the protests against the corona measures or in far-right movements. We are concerned with the destabilisation and polarisation of national public spheres in which extremists radicalize themselves and others through tactics of digital information warfare and commit verbal and physical acts of violence, also beyond the digital space (Cooperation with SNF-Loughborough University). At the same time, we engage in participatory research projects on how Hamburg citizens deal with multiple crises and re-imagine security in inclusive ways.

A fourth focus addresses contested norms, principles and rights in global conflicts. These include, especially, politically and geographically sensitive regions where, as part of CLICCS we study contested climate justice. In International Relations, research on norm contestation has shed light on new security actors whose practices contribute to the transformation of violence. Studies in the context of the ‘Women, Peace and Security’ agenda on the transgression of the prohibition of sexualized violence against women and girls in wars have shown that the inclusion of affected stakeholders in the formulation of new security strategies generate sustainable impact on countering sexualized violence. We are also interested in how and why particular ideas of legitimate and illegitimate forms of violence enter humanitarian law, and how humanitarian law, in turn, affects these ideas and the exercise of violence itself. Finally, we investigate the meta narrative of the myth of war and peace with the project in Practices of Global Governance of Disarmament (CONACYT/CSS).

A fifth focus is concerned with the role of IT-Systems and AI in security and violence. Under the umbrella of Ethics in Information Technology we look at the ethical, legal, social and political implications of contemporary information technologies and big data practices. We ask what destructive and constructive potential technologies have in light of extreme planetary insecurity and how they are contested societally and economically. Projects analyse Information Governance Technologies, IT-Security and Privacy, as well as the Control of Autonomous Weapon Systems through the Law.

In a sixth focus, a research group explored „time“ as a resource of action in wars, pogroms, occupations and aggressions across epochs and hence the relevance of temporality for actions and experiences by perpetrators and victims of violence. Exercising, experiencing and narrating violence are the three core topics in our systematical approach, based on findings from historical sources: They describe which temporal modes determined the exercise of violence, they transformed experiences from wars, raids, pogroms, riots into experiences, and they transferred the reconstructions of event, experience and interpretation into narratives. Other historical focal points are cultures of memory – with analyses of genocides in the 20th and 21st centuries as well as colonialism and (post-)colonial heritage.