Research Centre Centre for Statecraft and International Order

Contact

Laust Schouenborg, Head of centre, Associate Professor, lausts@ruc.dk
 

Researchers

Miriam Bak McKenna, Associate Professor, miriambm@ruc.dk

Kerstin Carlson, Associate Professor, carlson@ruc.dk

Sevasti Chatzopoulou, Associate Professor, seva@ruc.dk

Klaas Dykmann, Associate Professor, dykmann@ruc.dk

Line Engbo Gissel, Associate Professor, lgissel@ruc.dk

Michael Friederich Kluth, Associate Professor, kluth@ruc.dk

Gorm Rye Olsen, Professor, gormrye@ruc.dk

Laust Schouenborg, Associate Professor, lausts@ruc.dk

Matthew J. Spaniol, Assistant Professor, matt@ruc.dk

Bjørn Thomassen, Professor, bthomas@ruc.dk

Find the reseachers profile at the Roskilde University Research Portal

1. The Legal Foundations of International Order Programme

The goal of this programme is to investigate how transnational legal norms underpin international order. Of central concern is the extent to which international law has been able to travel beyond its origin in the West and incorporate non-Western cultures, often with very different understandings of justice. The programme will focus on salient issues such as the emergence of the International Criminal Court, the status of terrorism as it relates to international and municipal law, and the self-determination of peoples as a legal and political norm. 

Affiliated researchers: Line Gissel, Kerstin Carlson, Miriam Bak McKenna, Karmen Tornius

2. The Alfred Vagts Programme on Defence, Diplomacy and International Order

Named after the pioneer Alfred Vagts, this programme will investigate the relationship between defence and diplomacy, soldiers and diplomats, and how armed forces officers think about international relations and, in practice, contribute to the conduct of a nation’s foreign policy. The programme will also seek to further our understanding of international military cooperation, including international military interventions, arms control and joint defence procurement, as this is assumed to be partly built upon the assessment of the international situation by armed forces officers. The goal is to unearth the largely overlooked contribution that armed forces international thinking makes to the creation of international order.

Affiliated researchers: Michael Kluth, Gorm Rye Olsen and Laust Schouenborg

3. The Programme on Past, Present and Alternative International Orders

This programme is aimed at capturing what distinguishes the present international order from those that existed in the past, and those orders imagined for the future and currently in the making. A core goal is the comparative study of the Western liberal order, which has prevailed since 1945, and the Sino-centric alternative that is arguably being constructed by a rising China. 

Affiliated researchers: Klaas Dykmann, Bjørn Thomassen and Laust Schouenborg

4. Between Statecraft and Global Governance: The Programme on International Bureaucrats and Order Making

Order can sound like an abstract and empty signifier, but it is something that is created on a day-to-day basis by real people making concrete decisions in relation to concrete problems they experience in the international sphere. This is the domain of the international bureaucrats. This programme will investigate what the increasing scope of international problems, as well as the proliferation of international organisations, has done to the concrete order making that was traditionally the preserve of diplomats who hailed from the aristocracy, but is today managed in sometimes excruciating technical detail by specialised professionals. 

Affiliated researchers: Sevasti Chatzopoulou, Klaas Dykmann and Karmen Tornius

Henrik Breitenbauch (Dean of the Royal Danish Defence College)

Jesper Møller Sørensen (State Secretary for Foreign Policy, Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Charlotte Flindt Pedersen (Director of the Danish Foreign Policy Society)

Connie Hedegaard (Chair of the Board of CONCITO, former Danish minister and EU commissioner)

Anders Wivel (Professor at University of Copenhagen)

Trine Flockhart (Professor at the University of Southern Denmark)

Hans Mouritzen (Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies)

Karen Gram-Skjoldager (Associate Professor at Aahus University)

Beatrice de Graaf (professor at Utrecht University)

Sven Biscop (professor at Ghent University)

Ayşe Zarakol (professor at Cambridge University)

John Ikenberry (professor at Princeton University)

Diane Lesley Stone (professor at EUI)