Why is violence such an intimate part of life? From its most dramatic manifestations – war, torture, genocide – down to its most hidden forms – intimate partner violence, social exclusion, and poverty? Why do political regimes of all types – democratic, autocratic, dictatorial – continue to be plagued by this burden? Why is violence truly global?

I am an interdisciplinary social scientist and political theorist with core expertise on global political violence, humanitarianism, and social theory, and these questions and their global politics are at the heart of my research agenda. To approach them, I have always begun with political theory – where variations on their themes have always haunted philosophy. Yet, when speaking of violence, theory alone can be too abstract. I have thus always followed what I would term an applied theoretical tradition encapsulated by voices like Arendt, who watched Eichmann up-close, Fanon, who studied the Algerian war as a participant, or Sartre and de Beauvoir, who theorized Cuba’s revolution from Havana, not only Paris. It is this idea that theory must make ‘contact’with the world to understand and illuminate its problems that has most informed my research interests. In short, it is through a certain applied dance between theory and the world that my research has evolved, leading me to mix political theory with empirical inquiry, and – eventually – direct engagement with applied interventions against violence.

Currently, I am Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Political Science. At Copenhagen, I am also Director of the Security Risk Management Program, and Director of the Future of Advanced Security and Technology Research Hub (FASTER). I am also a Visiting Professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute and Principal Investigator for the Future of Humanitarian Design research collective.

Previously, I was Senior Researcher at the Geneva Graduate Institute’s Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP), where I led a research program on global violence prevention. I have also held positions at the University of Ottawa’s Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS), the International Relations Institute (IRI) of the Pontificial Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, the Centre for Resolution of International Conflicts (CRIC) at the University of Copenhagen, and the Max Weber Foundation’s Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB) in Lebanon.