Christian Bueger

Category Archives: Events and Presentations


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Gathering of diplomatic practice scholars

On Monday and Tuesday, I had the pleasure to attend at a meeting that brought the community of scholars working on diplomatic practices together in Copenhagen. The event was organized by Rebecca Adler-Nissen’s DIPLOFACE project.

With 50+ scholars attending and presenting their ideas and book projects, the event well documented the strong overlap between diplomacy studies and international practice theory. The fact that the majority of practice scholars in International Relations works in one way or the other on diplomatic practices, has brought up some criticism against practice theory as to focused on global elite. Yet, one should not overlook the fact that diplomacy is one of the foundational practice of international relations. What became clear at the meeting, is that scholars are also substantially interested in the practices of international administrators or scientific experts, which may (or may not) participate in diplomacy as practice.

A key cross-cutting theme of the event were also the substantial transformations that diplomacy faces in an age of increasingly digitally mediated interactions and the return of geopolitical discourse.


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The land-sea nexus

How can we conceptualize the relations between the land and the sea? This is the key driving question of a workshop organized by the Danish Institute for International Studies, that I am participating in on the 25th and 26th of August.

In my own contribution, I study the land-sea nexus as an example of ‘nexification’. I am interested in the sociology that drives the linkage. Broadly I distinguish three types: mergers driven by intellectual curiosity, interested in how the two hang together (largely anchored in history and anthropology), those that argue that the sea is increasingly governed by rationalities that persist on land (in international law and geography), and studies driven by policy demands, that investigate how solutions to maritime problems may be sought on land.


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Event on maritime security in WIO

Today I had the opportunity to speak at an hybrid event organized by the Indian Ocean Commission and the Charles Telfair Centre on maritime security in the Western Indian Ocean (https://lnkd.in/dz2URFYP). The lively discussion revolved around issues of which maritime security issues to prioritized, whether regional institutions deliver, and how to interpret the new geopolitical thinking in the region.

In my comments, I drew on our recent analysis, published in African Security Review, coauthored with Jan Stockbruegger (https://lnkd.in/d2KXBj24). My key take away points from the event:

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The 7 challenges of subsea cable security – Summary of our recent event

In June we held an expert workshop on subsea data cables and their security. The workshop summary is now published. Our key argument is that the new awareness and the growing expansion of the network implies a new era for cable security.

We discuss seven key challenges of the new era. This includes how to deal with the growing number of actors involved, how to use existing capabilities efficiently, develop new ones, but also how to handle the data from cable sensors.


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At UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon

This week I am attending the UN Ocean Conference. These type of conferences are increasingly important in ocean governance, and it will be an exciting opportunity to learn more about how such events unfold, and if and how they have an impact on global ocean governance.
As part of the conference we are also hosting together with the Atlantic Center of the Portuguese Ministry of Defense and the Institute for Security Studies (Pretoria) an expert workshop on subsea data cable protection. The workshop is part of our DACANE project and will reflect on the insights gained in our recent study on data cables for the European Parliament.

We are also co-hosting a public panel, which is part of the UN Ocean Conference Programme. In the public event we will explore the relation between marine infrastructure protection and marine conservation. The panel is opened by the Portuguese Secretary of State for Defence, Marco Capitão Ferreira, as well as Peter Thomson, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean. It is chaired by Martin Koehring, Head, World Ocean Initiative, Economist Impact and features Steve Dawe, Chairman European Subsea Cable Association, Kaitlin Meredith, UNODC Global Maritime Crime Programme, Philippe Dumont, CEO EllaLink, Leendert Bal, Head of Safety, Security and Surveillance Department, European Maritime Safety Agency and myself.


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Workshop on Anthropology and Interventions

On June 20 and 21st I attended a workshop at the European University Institute. The event explored the intersection between knowledge production, intervention and the relations between the local and global.

In my contribution to the workshop I argued that to often we presume that knowledge and knowledge production is seen as preceding action. Instead we have to understand them as an integral part of a practice. Drawing on insights from a text titled “theorizing capacity building co-authored with Simone Tholens, I emphasized the need for going beyond epistemic determinism, that is the assumption that the practices of intervenors is informed by pre-established knowledge. This is not to argue that such pre-knowledge does not matter, but it is to suggest that we should not overestimate its importance. Often knowledge is made up on the spot in a concrete intervention locale, and often it is experimental. I drew on a range of examples from maritime security to illustrate the argument.


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Workshop on international objects

The idea that international relations research is more productive if it starts out from objects, rather than subjects and their intentions, is increasingly gaining a foothold in the discipline. On June 16th and 17th the Global Governance Centre of the Graduate Institute hosted a workshop in Geneva that assembled some of the key advocates of the turn to objectual international relations. The discussion concerned in particular the relationship between expertise and object and for instance the question in what way epistemic practices are required for objects of global governance to emerge.

At the workshop I presented some ideas on the relationship between epistemic infrastructures and global governance objects. I argued that such infrastructures are vital in the production and maintenance of objects. I drew on empirical examples from the evolution of ‘piracy’ as an object of international governance and how contemporary maritime domain awareness approaches are increasingly rendering the object as multiple.


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Workshop on Japan-EU relations

On the 15th of June, I had the pleasure to attend the workshop “Japan and Europe in a contested world”, held at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. At the workshop I was introducing our research on the consequences of the Indo-Pacific narrative for the EU and Japan and the dangers of maritime militarization dynamics.


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SafeSeas Workshop on maritime security in the United Kingdom

Following up on our work with the UK government on refreshing the maritime security strategy, SafeSeas is organizing a one day workshop discussing the challenges linked to implementing the strategy. The workshop is organized by Tim Edmunds and in collaboration with the Department of Transport. The event will bring together key representatives of the UK maritime security community.


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Cyber Diplomacy Workshop in Bologna

On June 6th, I am attending the CyDiplo Workshop “Diversifying Cyber Diplomacy”, organized by the University of Bologna. At the workshop I will be giving a talk on the importance of including the material dimension in the agenda, and will investigate how subsea data cables matter for cyber diplomacy and cyber security. I draw on research conducted jointly with Tobias Liebetrau as part of our project on ocean infrastructures.