Christian Bueger

Category Archives: Work in Progress


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Field visit to Shetlands

Shetland Islands is the proto-type of an energy island and at the heart of the green energy transition in the North Sea. Moving from oil and gas to renewable energy production is at the heart of the islands transformation. From the 19th to 22nd of May, I conducted a field visit together with Professor Andrew Neal from the University of Edinburgh to discuss with local experts the transition and explore the multitude of infrastructures on the islands, how they are entangled and how they are protected.

The visit was part of the Copenhagen Edinburgh partnership project on ‘Securing the Green Transition in the North Sea.’ A field report is in the making.


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Oceans in focus at International Studies Association conference

In the first week of April the annual conference of the International Studies Association takes place in San Francisco, United States. At this years edition, scholars interested in global ocean politics will gather at the event. Over ten panels focus on the oceans – seven of which are part of the coordinated panel series #OceanicIR – and an informal reception – the Blue Drinks – will allow scholars to network. This continues the tradition established in 2023.

Together with Beth Mendenhall and Bec Strating I am organizing a mini-workshop in which we explore oceanic regions and I am presenting three papers linked to ongoing ocean politics research:

  • Blue Waves – How the Oceans made IR, with Jan Stockbruegger, debunks the myth that IR has been seablind and shows at what moments in time, the oceans were crucial for disciplinary developments.
  • Sneaky Foreign Policy. Small Island Agency in the new age of geopolitical competition, with Anders Wivel, develops a pragmatist-realist framework for the study of small island agency and investigates the case of Solomon Islands.
  • “The ship has reached the shore”: The amalgamation of communities of practice of the high seas, with Maren Hofius, provides an interpretation of the BBNJ negotiations from the perspective of community of practice theory.


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Protecting North Sea infrastructure – new research partnership

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.


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Research group meeting in Oldenburg

The Ocean Infrastructures Research Group held a two day planning meeting at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biology where the co-leader Kim Peters is based. At the meeting we set the agenda for 2023.

The group aims at developing a new vision and understanding of how the oceans are governed today. Our core tool is to think through global ocean politics, drawing on the concept of infrastructures. The oceans host various infrastructures, from cables and pipelines to ports, shipping and installations. In the group we develop the theory of infrastructures, but also explore its practical implications for new ocean policies.

In 2023 we are planning events, including on grey infrastructures and the shipping industry, on infrastructure protection in the Baltic Sea and North Sea, on shipping accidents and oil spills, as well as on justice at sea.

Our first research results will be published in an edited volume that we are currently working on, as well as two articles which are under review.


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Seasonal greetings and a happy new year 2023

As the year ends and the festive season is in full swing, I will be out of office and not respond to emails, between 23.12. and 7.1.2023. I wish everyone a great couple of days and a good start into the new year!

2022 was a busy and productive year. The key highlights included the launch of our new research group on Ocean Infrastructures in which we will develop new understandings of global ocean politics. The Nord Stream attack in autumn led to much media attention for our work on subsea infrastructures.

Having been in the making for several years, our edited volume Conceptualizing International Practices was finally published by Cambridge University Press. One of my favorite recent essays on Styles of Theorizing Practice also is out.

I had the pleasure to spend parts of this year on research leave. I spent extended periods in Italy, Kenya, South Africa, Malta and Mauritius. Thank you to everyone hosting me during these times! The post-Covid time also led to quite a number of invitations to give talks. In a quick recount, it was no less than 35 talks in workshops, naval symposia and other events!

It was good to engage with colleagues to discuss security, theory, and stuff such as Maritime Domain Awareness, security strategies, or infrastructures. A highlight was the Seapower Symposium in Sydney hosted by the Australian Navy where I gave a key note address on the evolution of maritime security thinking.

The draft of the book Understanding Maritime Security authored with Tim Edmunds is also done, and I look forward to see it published in 2023. It will be a key new resource for professionals and analysts to unlock the complexity of maritime security and to connect the dots.

In 2023 I will be teaching a new course that I am quite excited about. Global Ocean Politics is an attempt to reconnect the sea to the discipline of international relations, and to enhance the awareness among students for the challenges in the oceans. I look forward to explore the topic with students.

In the coming year, we will also work on a new edited volume. Following our authors workshop in October, Kimberley Peter, Tobias Liebetrau, Jan Stockbruegger and I – the ocean infrastructure research group -, are editing a volume that showcases the variety of infrastructures and how they govern the sea. I also look forward to working with a new post doc that will join us in Spring in the group.

I am planning to spend some time in 2023 to continue the research on maritime domain awareness, on maritime security strategy collaborating with the EU and others, write up a piece on marine accidents, and return to some methodological questions of practice theory and concept analysis.


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Workshop on Ocean Infrastructures – Launch of our new research group

Our new research group on Ocean Infrastructures was launched with a workshop exploring how marine activities are shaped by various infrastructures on 13th and 14th of October.

How do infrastructures enable and restrict oceanic practices and produce new forms of agency, spatiality and materiality in the oceans? That was the key question we addressed with 20 scholars from different disciplines, including geography, international relations, law and science and technology studies. The goal of the workshop was to explore the variety of ocean infrastructures, but also the question in how far the conceptual vocabulary of infrastructures can shed new light on how the oceans are governed today.

We explored infrastructures reaching from shipping to under water tunnels and choke points, but also in how far international institutions, treaties and global ocean narratives can be conceptualized as infrastructures.

Part of the workshop was also an excursion to the maritime history of Denmark with a visit to the naval facilities at Holmen, and a public roundtable that took the current interest on critical infrastructure protection as its focus.

The workshop not only marked the launch of our research group funded by the Velux Foundation, but also kickstarted our work on an edited volume on ocean infrastructures which we hope to complete by the end of 2023.


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Consequences of the Nord Stream sabotage

The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines has drawn unprecedented attention to the under water domain and the criticality of subsea infrastructures. Indeed, the world economy depends on the ocean floor as never before in history. It is pipelines, electricity cables, and data cables, that connect the global economy.

Drawing on the research conducted as part of our ocean infrastructure research group, in particular our work on subsea data cables, I have been commenting in several news outlets on this issue, including the Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegel, and others. See the overview here.

An independent commentary on the consequences for the EU was published by The Conversation. A commentary co-authored with Tobias Liebetrau published in The Loop argues that we have to change our perspective of the under water space more generally.

The European Parliament discussed our report on October 6th and announced that our recommendations will inform an action plan on the protection of underwater infrastructures. In response, I published a commentary in EUObserver arguing that the action plan of the commission is not sufficient.


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Visiting Fellow in Malta

From October to November 2022, I will be a visiting fellow at the Department of International Relations at the University of Malta. During my stay, I am working on two book projects: An introduction to maritime security (together with Tim Edmunds), and a research monograph on the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia and how it steered the fight against piracy.

I am also meeting with the broad range of institutions that focus on ocean governance in the country.


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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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Keynote address at Seapower Conference in Australia

The Australian navy is hosting the Indo Pacific Seapower 2022 conference from the 10th to 14th of May, and I am delighted to attend. I will be giving one of the keynote addresses. In my talk I revisit the evolution of maritime security thinking. I argue that there are different waves of maritime security and speculate about whether there is a new wave on the horizon. The recording of the presentation is available here.