A new teaching term kicked off at the University of Copenhagen. This semester I will have the pleasure to explore with students two crucial topics.
In the first seminar co-taught with Jan Stockbruegger we explore Global Ocean Politics. We discuss what is at stake in governing the oceans exploring the wide range of problems and actors that the oceans are facing. The seminar adds a teaching component to our ocean infrastructure research group.
The second seminar concerns methodology and research design. In the course titled ‘How to design research in International relations that matters‘, we will explore how research can be designed to resonate in global political discourses and interfere with international practices. With our focus on small scale research projects this is an interesting challenge that we need to get better at tackling.
The annual gathering of the community of scholars within the European International Studies Association is taking place in Potsdam this year from the 6th to 9th of September.
At the conference I am participating in a range of discussions presenting new drafts and reflecting on some older work.
I am presenting two new drafts. One is a methodological reflection on how practice theoretical scholarship can intervene in practice developing a framework centered around practical resonance and the making of epistemic objects. The other one is a co-authored draft together with Anders Wivel that continues our work on the agency of islands. We develop a pragmatist realist framework and study the case of Solomon Islands. We argue that the small island state has advanced a new foreign policy style that we describe as sneaky foreign policy. Get in touch if you want to read any of these new drafts.
Three roundtables provide space to reflect on prior work, specifically on questions of knowledge production and expertise, as well as on the role of objects in global politics.
To add some fun to the mix, we are also discussing the contributions that the cartoon series Asterix can make to the understanding of global politics.
From the 29th of August to the 3rd of September I had the pleasure to attend the American Political Science Association (APSA) annual conference. It had been almost ten year since I attend this conference last, and my primary motivator to attend, was to increase my understanding of where the American political science debate is drifting. The gap between European and U.S. discourses has been growing over the years and it is time to build better bridges again.
While U.S. research is strong in the ways it is methods driven and scholars engage in deep empirical work, conceptual thinking and reflexivity often seems to get less attention. In Europe one can observe the opposite trend: Much focus on concepts and theorizing, less attention to empirical depth.
At the conference I participated in a panel on infrastructures, presenting our collective work in the Ocean Infrastructure research group. A key take away point from the discussion was that the concept of infrastructure, can be an important vehicle to bridge the transatlantic divide.
Over the last ten days I was with the team of the Ocean Infrastructure Research Group in Mauritius. Together we advanced the draft of our forthcoming book on ocean infrastructure and conducted field work on the 2020 Wakashio oil spill, which is one of our case studies.
In the book we develop a new understanding of global ocean politics by developing a framework centered on infrastructure. We argue that the concept of infrastructure opens productive new avenues for understanding global ocean politics that allows us to overcome the limits of thinking centered on territory, freedom or global commons. We show the evolution of the oceans as an infrastructural space, and show how we can rethink power, law, security and knowledge infrastructurally.
Public event on shipping risks
Fieldwork on shipping risks in small islands
Part of our stay in Mauritius was also a stakeholder workshop and a public event on shipping risks and the lessons from the 2020 Wakashio shipping accident which caused a major environmental disaster in the country. The event was covered in the national newspapers, and we also met with a range of stakeholders individually, including the minister on blue economy, fishing and shipping.
Field visit guided by EcoSud
A particular important experience was a field visit to the site where the accident happened and the coastal region where the oil was spilled. The visit was organized by the local NGO EcoSud. It revealed that the clean up is completed, but that the disaster has some visible and lasting impact on the coastal eco-system, and there continues to be residues of oil in the mangrove forests. In other words, the disaster is not over, but will have to be managed carefully in the years to come.
Critical maritime infrastructure protection (CMIP) is since the Nord Stream attacks in the Baltic Sea of 2022 a political priority. What are maritime infrastructures, what threats and risks are they facing, and how can they be best protected? These are the questions we address in a new article now out as open access with Marine Policy.
Over the next two weeks I will be giving a range of talks in Thailand and Singapore. On the 12th I am attending the Southeast Asia Maritime Law Enforcement Initiative (SEAMLEI), 9th Annual Commanders’ Forum and give a talk on the consequences of climate change for maritime security planning and operations.
On the 13th I will be speaking at an event on Critical Maritime Infrastructure Protection in Southeast Asia organized by the National University of Singapore’s Center of International Law. I will focus in particular on the consequences of green energy expansion for Singapore and the South China Sea.
From the 16th I am attending the Regional Maritime Security Practitioner Programme (RMPP) of the Singapore Navy. The Programme is one of the capstone events of the Information Fusion Center in Singapore and brings together over 100 participants from across the world. It is one of the world’s largest gatherings of maritime security practitioners and maritime domain awareness specialists. At the event, I will be giving a presentation on current trends in maritime security drawing on our book forthcoming with Oxford University Press (with Tim Edmunds) and chair a panel on current threats in the region.
Ireland is an island, and its security is dependent on the sea. On June 22nd I had the opportunity to contribute to the countries ongoing Consultative Forum on International Security Policy. The goal of the forum is to inform the public debate about the future options of the countries security policy and its tradition of neutrality.
In my contribution, some of which is summarized in this article, I stressed that Ireland is in a new era because it’s dependency on maritime infrastructure is increasing, and the Nord Stream attacks demonstrates that it is vulnerable. I emphasized the importance of close cooperation in the region within the EU and in mini-lateral formats.
In a new article published in International Affairs, Felix Mallin and I investigate the current state of global ocean politics. Highlighting the dramatic changes in awareness and rethinking the oceans, we show how the debate is increasingly organized by four new ‘blue paradigms’: maritime security, blue economy, ocean health, and blue justice.
We explore each of the blue paradigms in detail and discuss how they render the current state of the oceans problematic in different ways. In consequence, the proposed policy solutions and instruments diverge quite substantially, and new ways of forging synergies between the paradigms must be identified.
As part of the presidency of the European Council, Sweden is inviting the members of the Council working group on maritime security for an away day. The program focuses on the future of maritime security, the Baltic Sea, as well as a range of social, cultural and military-related visits and activities. The event takes place in Karlskrona, the main Swedish naval base in the Baltic, and a city with a long maritime heritage, 13-15.7.2023.
Participating in the event, I am giving a talk on critical maritime infrastructure protection in Europe with a focus on the North Sea, as well as participating in a roundtable on the future of maritime security in the EU.
The North Sea is on its way to become the power house of Europe. Ongoing investments in green infrastructures, including wind farms, energy islands, hydrogen production and carbon storage make the North Sea a vital strategic region. Since the Nord Stream attack, the latest, it is known that maritime infrastructures are vulnerable to attack and damage. How can the maritime infrastructures be better protected?
This is the key question that we explore in a new partnership between the University of Copenhagen and the University of Edinburgh led by Andrew Neal and I. With seed funding from the Edinburgh-Copenhagen Strategic Partnership Initiative we will conduct explorative research on infrastructures in the region, threats and vulnerabilities, as well as technical and political solutions.
