Research
Projects

Legacies of War
 

This project explores the legacy that the experience of war leaves in societies. The focus is on three peoples who are currently living through war and conflict: Ukrainians, Syrians, and Palestinians. Survey data collected from these three groups inquired into respondents’ interpretations of their war experiences. 
 
The three parts of the project investigate first, people’s stories about the conflict events and the parties involved; second, their feelings of national attachment to their countries despite or because of the war, and third, their visions of a peaceful future. 
 
Together, people’s narratives of the war, their national identifications, and their ideas of the future form what this book calls the ‘legacy of war’. By coming to terms with the war, processing collective feelings, and imagining the future, new political and social visions emerge that outline a possible horizon for peace.

Memory

My first book, “Collective Memory in International Relations”, was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press. The book introduces the sociological concept of ‘collective memory’ into IR, showing how countries form national memories of past events. 
 
The book particularly looks at how countries deal with shameful historical legacies. It takes the examples of West Germany and Austria, and how these two created different memories of their Nazi past in the post-war period.
 
For researchers, the book offers a framework to analyze how memories translate into foreign policy strategies and diplomacy. 
 
For scholars, practitioners and policymakers, the two historical cases illuminate why countries embrace or deny responsibility for their past crimes, and with what consequences for their policies, identities and values in the long run.
 
My newest research on memory looks at how the memories of fascism and colonialism are employed in UN Security Council debates to get humanitarian interventions underway.
 
Another paper published in the ‘Journal of Peace Research’ looks at memory dynamics between different victim groups worldwide, exploring how current victims compare their experiences with the historical memory of the Holocaust.

Atonement

 
Atonement is the state practice through which political representatives issue official apologies and reparation payments to the victims of mass atrocities, war crimes, and human rights abuses. 
 
My project examines the historical cases of West Germany, Austria, and Japan. From their post-war behavior, I identify incentives and barriers for atonement in other cases. 
 
In my article, published in ‘International Security’, I show that atonement is a political choice. Politicians may offer official apologies and pay reparations not out of goodwill or ethical conviction but because doing so promises tangible political benefits, such as regional integration, bilateral trust, and improved partnerships between countries.
 
This finding brings strategy back into the equation: The good news is that atonement does not require the “right” beliefs, but rather an alignment of interests. As such, the international community could, if it wanted to, incentivize former perpetrators toward atonement.
 
Today, there are opportunities for atonement policies to reconcile Japan and South Korea over the issue of sexual slavery during World War II, Turkey and Armenia over the Armenian genocide during World War I, and Serbia and Bosnia to heal the wounds of their war in the 1990s and clear the way for their prospective inclusion in the European Union. Atonement can also be a strategy to approach the legacies of colonialism and slavery.