As part of my Chair, I am directing the research area Europe in the world at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. I run a regular seminar series as well as manuscript workshops, where researchers and fellows can present their work in progress. Every year, I also organize one open-call workshop based on a common theme. Past workshops have been on global governance and regime complexity as well as on European security architectures.

My current research project, "Ad hoc crisis response and international organisations (ADHOCISM)" (2021-2025), is funded by the Research Council of Norway and based at NUPI. The research team of which I am a member of, investigates when and how actors opt for ad hoc coalitions rather than formal international multilateral structures to coordinate multilateral health and crisis management policies as well as the impact that ad hoc coalitions have on international organizations in international security and health.

Since November 2023, I am also a member of the Horizon Europe Project Transforming and Defending Multilateralism: European Union Support for more Robust, Effective and Democratic Global Governance (ENSURED) which is hosted by the University of Maastricht. Together with this large consortium of scholars across the world, I examine the resilience and challenges to multilateralism both as a set of principles and an organizational format.

Three research projects just ended in 2023. In the first one, I was the principal investigator of the Swiss National Science Foundation-funded project “To Save and To Defend: Global Normative Ambiguity and Regional Order” (2017-23). The project's main aims has been to disentangle different definitions and practices of the use of force as well as to analyze the UN's relationship with regional security organizations. The second research project was entitled “Fighting together, moving apart? European common defence and shared security in an age of Brexit and Trump” (2018-2023). This VolkwagenStiftung-funded project has supported the research of a consortium of scholars of public opinion, political elite, and social identities to examine the interlinkages between public opinion, media, and political elites on European security and defense issues.

And the third project People and International Politics in Post-War Europe, was CIVICA project together with Mareike Kleine and Chris Anderson from the LSE, where we collected and examined public opinion data in Europe from the Cold War period.

I have taught classes on “Conflict and Intervention”, “European Security Challenges and Responses”, “Foreign Policy Analysis”, “Global Order”, “International Governance”, “International Security”, “Regions, Power and Norms”, “Security Governance”, “Multilateral Cooperation and Institutional Complexity” and “Global Ordering and European Security”.

In my teaching, I combine two basic goals: knowledge about particular subjects and critical and analytical thinking. I thereby encourage researchers to go beyond the boundaries of (sub)fields and instead to emphasize problem(atique)-driven research and thinking. More precisely, I try to create classroom environments in which everyone can (i) acquire theoretical, conceptual and empirical knowledge on a given subject with an awareness of disciplinary opportunities and constraints, (ii) become critical evaluators of arguments and methodologies, questioning assumptions and possible biases, (iii) identify research gaps and ways to answer their questions of interest, and (iv) discuss and debate freely. To those ends, I expose researchers to a broad range of theoretical, epistemological and methodological approaches (if possible embedded in a history of ideas) of what regulates and constitutes domestic, regional, international and global politics.

Over the years, I have enjoyed teaching and discussing with policy makers in Armenia, Belgium, Georgia and Switzerland. I also have conducted independent external evaluations such as for the UN’s Peacebuilding Fund in Burundi, given written testimony on European security policies for the UK House of Lords, and participated in track 2 and 1.5 dialogues between China and Switzerland on conflict prevention. In addition, I sit on the advisory board of several initiatives and institutions that combine academic and policy dialogues such as the EU Cyber Direct or the Institut für Friedensforschung und Sicherheitspolitik and am member of the Munich Security Conference’s jury for the McCain dissertation award. Lastly, I occasionally also write policy papers.

Together with colleagues in Law and History, I am convening this newly established research cluster. More information is available here.

I am interested in supervising a broad range of research topics that broadly fall under the International Relations umbrella. I am particularly curious to read proposals that address original research questions that contribute to the development and refinement of international relations theories, international organizations and their institutional environments, cooperation logics within and across policy domains, policy scope expansion, preference formations processes and questions of global and European security.