DFG-Project “Recasting the role of citizens in foreign and security policy? Democratic innovations and changing patterns of interaction between European executives and citizens”

HSU

20. February 2023

Participatory-deliberative processes in foreign and security policy: understandings, processes & ramifications

Project team: Anna Geis / Hanna Pfeifer / Christian Opitz

Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG), June 2022-May 2025

For more information on our DFG-funded research project on democratic innovations in foreign and security policy, please visit the website citizens-in-foreign-policy.com

This DFG-project expands and deepens our pre-study of the German case, and it draws on preliminary research on DIs in other European countries (funded by the internal funding line of the HSU).

LFF Graduate Programme: Democratising Security in Turbulent Times

HSU

20. June 2020

Funding period: 1 October 2020 – 31 March 2024

Funded by: Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg: „Landesforschungsförderung“ (a state-wide research funding scheme).

Coordinated by Universität Hamburg, the programme is an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers from Universität Hamburg (UHH), Helmut-Schmidt-University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg (HSU), Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at Universität Hamburg (IFSH) and the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA).

How is security provided in today’s turbulent times and how does this affect the relationship between democracy and security? The interdisciplinary graduate programme examines fundamental reconfigurations of the relationship between security and democracy against the backdrop of growing political and societal polarisation in the face of a global pandemic and the rise of antidemocratic forces, the advent of new digital technologies and the rescaling of security to arenas below and beyond the state.

As established ways of resolving conflicts or planning for the future have come under stress, new modes of ordering beyond established rules and processes emerge, yet with often transitionary outcomes and conflictual potential. Unequal dynamics of resource concentration and abandonment shrink political spaces for providing security in line with core democratic principles: what the promise of security entails, how it is imagined, for whom and at what price, is an increasingly divided matter — a tendency which has dramatically deepened in the turbulent times of a global pandemic.

At the intersection of international relations, political theory, sociology, criminology and communication studies, the graduate programme investigates emerging security configurations in turbulent times and contributes to understanding their governability as well as the democratic dilemmas and opportunities that arise.

The possibilities and challenges of democratising security are analyzed in three inter-connected research perspectives: reordering democratic security and the emergence of new landscapes of security; reimagining democratic security as an affective matter around which communities and publics form; and redesigning democratic security through democratic exper-iments and the forging of norms.

Seven Principal Investigators from different disciplines are responsible for the programme:

Prof. Dr. Ursula Schröder (director of IFSH/ professor at UHH), coordinator of the programme
Prof. Dr. Anna Geis (HSU)
Prof. Dr. Christine Hentschel (UHH)
Prof. Dr. Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw (UHH)
Prof. Dr. Susanne Krasmann (UHH)
Prof. Dr. Sabine Kurtenbach (GIGA)
Prof. Dr. Antje Wiener (UHH)

The official website of the programme with detailed information on the content is run by the Universität Hamburg, please visit:

https://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/en/forschung/forschungsschwerpunkte/profilinitiative-gewalt-und-sicherheitsforschung/lff-graduate-programme.html

DFG Project “Overlapping Spheres of Authority” (Geis/Moe/Pollmann)

HSU

2. August 2021

DFG Research Group

“Overlapping Spheres of Authority and Interface Conflicts in the Global Order” (OSAIC)

Principal Investigator: Prof Dr Anna Geis, Institute for International Politics, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg
Project Researchers: Dr. Louise Wiuff Moe (until 31.3.2020), Stephanie Jänsch (1.5.-31.12.2020), Dr. Christian Opitz (1.11.2019-30.6.2020) and Lena Pollmann M.A.
Time frame: 2017-2020

The project has started 1 June 2017. A detailed description of the project can be found here.

The research group, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), focuses on the rise of interface conflicts within and across overlapping spheres of authority. The increased institutional production of norms in the international realm leads to both horizontal interface conflicts at the same level of governance (e.g. across two or more international spheres of authority) and vertical interface conflicts across spheres of authority on different levels (e.g. international and national spheres of authority). Under which conditions become such conflicts manifest? What are the responses to conflicting rules originating from overlapping spheres of authority? If responses are justified with reference to normative principles, what are these principles and how are they operationalized concretely? What consequences do the different ways of responding to interface conflicts have for the global order as a whole? With these questions, the research group moves beyond the study of issue-area specific international institutions or organizations, and targets the question of the international order understood as a system of overlapping and interacting spheres of authority.

The interdisciplinary research group consists of thematic sub-projects in the fields of international relations and (international) law. Below, you will find a brief description of the sub-projects the research group is working on.

Sub-project (Director: Anna Geis): “Management of Interface Conflicts in African Security Governance”

Security issues in global governance are shaped by different spheres of authority and the interaction between multiple political actors on different levels. Legally, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has the supreme political authority to take decisions on the use of military force. However, overlapping memberships of states in the UN(SC) and in various regional (security) organizations enhance the potential for norm conflicts across and within several spheres of authority. One such regional organization is the African Union that was set up in 2002 as successor to the Organization of African Unity and that has established itself as a significant collective security provider. Many violent intra-state conflicts are located within the geographical sphere of the African Union and several military interventions justified with references to human rights norms take place in Africa. Today, African security governance constitutes a dense web of interactions between international, regional, sub-regional and national actors, with the African Union being the regional key actor in this web. In this configuration interface conflicts are likely to occur.

The project analyzes seven cases of military missions in Africa as settings for interface conflicts, addressing the following questions: How do key actors within the emerging African security governance architecture articulate and manage vertical interface conflicts in the context of military deployments? Which norms do these actors invoke, and how can the variety in responses to such conflicts be explained? What are the effects of different forms of conflict management?

Publications

Louise Wiuff Moe (2020): The Dark Side of Institutional Collaboration: How Peacekeeping-counterterrorism Convergences Weaken the Protection of Civilians in Mali, in: International Peacekeeping, DOI: 10.1080/13533312.2020.1821364

Louise Wiuff Moe/Anna Geis 2020: From liberal interventionism to stabilisation: A new consensus on norm-downsizing in interventions in Africa, in: Global Constitutionalism, 9: 2, 387-412 (Special Issue ”After Fragmentation”, ed. by Christian Kreuder-Sonnen & Michael Zürn); available as Open Access: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-constitutionalism/article/from-liberal-interventionism-to-stabilisation-a-new-consensus-on-normdownsizing-in-interventions-in-africa/7C6E5C307C1ACE972D4C4AD8E56DFD68

Louise Wiuff Moe/Anna Geis (eds.) 2020: Security Governance/International Organisations in Africa, Special Issue of Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 14: 2.

Louise Wiuff Moe/ Anna Geis 2020: Hybridity and Friction in Organizational Politics: New Perspectives on the African Regime Complex, in: Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 14: 2, 148-170. Free Access online: https://www.tandfonline.com

Louise Wiuff Moe (2019): Clear, Hold, Build…a ‘Local’ State: Counterinsurgency and Territorial Orders in Somalia, in Lemay-Hébert, Nicolas (ed.), Handbook of Intervention and Statebuilding, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 151–160.

Louise Wiuff Moe (2019): Somaliland, in Özerdem, Alpaslan and Roger Mac Ginty (eds.), Comparing Peace Processes, London: Routledge, pp. 255-269.

Louise Wiuff Moe (2018): Counterinsurgency in the Somali territories: the ‘grey zone’ between peace and pacification, in: International Affairs, 94: 2, 319–341.

Louise Wiuff Moe (with Finn Stepputat) (2018): Peacebuilding in an era of pragmatism: introduction, International Affairs 94: 2, 293–299.

Conference papers and talks

Anna Geis, Louise Wiuff Moe, Lena Pollmann: The ‘dark side’ of inter-organizational collaboration: counterterrorism partnerships in Africa, at the authors workshop “Inter-organizational Relations and World Order” (organized by Ulrich Franke & Martin Koch) University of Bielefeld, 19-20 June 2020 (postponed to 2021)

Louise Wiuff Moe: Peace, Protection and Counterterrorism: Discursive Distancing and Practical Entanglements in Inter-organizational Relations in Mali (paper presentation), and Enhancing the Political Space for Protection of Civilians in Mali (Ignite Talk presenter) at the Folke Bernadotte Academy Research Workshop and Research-Policy Dialogue: Protection of Civilians in UN and Regional Peace Operations, Entebbe, Uganda, 5-6 November 2019.

Louise Wiuff Moe: Invited roundtable participant. Oxford Research Group roundtable on Fusion Doctrine and Remote Warfare on the African Continent (policy-research roundtable discussion on how to adapt UK Fusion Doctrine to Africa), London, UK, 17 September 2019.

Louise Wiuff Moe/Lena Pollmann: African Agency in the Reshaping of International Security Norms, at German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg, 26 June 2019.

Anna Geis: How securitization affects the relationship between global and regional IOs?, at the Congress of the German Political Science Association (DVPW) “Frontiers of Democracy“, Frankfurt, 25-28 September 2018.

Anna Geis, Louise Moe, Lena Schumacher 2018: African Agency in the Re-shaping of International Human Rights and Security Norms, presented at “Normenforschung in den Internationalen Beziehungen – Normen und die Rolle von Agency”, 4th and 5th May 2018, Potsdam, and at “Association of African Studies in Germany – African Connections”, 27th to 30th June 2018, Leipzig.

Louise Wiuff Moe 2018: Norm erosion and Counterterrorism: Changing Practices of Security Governance in Africa, presented at “The British International Studies Association 43rd Annual Conference”, 13th to 15th June 2018, Bath (UK).

Louis Wiuff Moe, Lena Schumacher 2018: Inter-Organizational Conflicts and Collaboration in Africa and the Reshaping of Human Rights and Security Norms, presented at the “ECPR General Conference”, 22th to 25th August 2018, Hamburg.

Lena Schumacher 2018: Pro-Constitutional Interventionism – the Practices of the African Union, presented at the “12th Pan-European Conference on International Relations”, 12th to 15th September 2018, Prague (CZE).

Louise Wiuff Moe 2018: “What is peace” in post 9/11 stabilization missions? Observations from Mali, presented at “‘Doing Peace’ after Liberalism? Legitimising and Practising pro-peace interventions in a global political marketplace”, 3th to 4th December 2018, Vienna (AUT).

Anna Geis/Louise Wiuff Moe/Lena Schumacher: Management of interface conflicts in African security governance: a research agenda, at 11th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, Barcelona, 12-16 September 2017.

Conduct of a project-related workshop at HSU:
Digital Workshop: “African Agency in the Transforming Field of Security Governance: Norms, Organizations and Futures”, Helmut-Schmidt-Universität/Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg, 5./6. November 2020.

DSF Project “(Non-)Recognition of Armed Non-State Actors: Risks and Opportunities for Conflict Transformation” (Geis/Clément/Pfeifer)

HSU

12. August 2021

Project start in March 2017. Organisation of an international conference, funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF). The conference took place at the HSU in June 2018. An edited volume on the results of the conference is currently in preparation. A conference report can be found here.

Organisers: Anna Geis, Maéva Clément, and Hanna Pfeifer

Social science research on “recognition” and “mis/non-recognition” has not yet entered the field of study addressing conflict transformation, especially with regards to conflicts with armed non-state actors (ANSAs). This international conference was dedicated to addressing this gap and thereby advancing by both recognition research and Peace and Conflict Studies. The driving research questions throughout the conference were: Which forms of (non-)recognition of ANSAs do occur in violent conflicts and how can we analyze them? Which risks and opportunities arise in processes of conflict transformation, when state actors recognise or, conversely, deny ANSAs recognition?

The conference was structured around individual case studies of particular relevance to the topic. The line-up of researchers covered prominent conflicts in which ANSAs participate, from various world regions and different socio-political contexts. Additionally, Véronique Dudouet (Berghof Foundation) reflected in her keynote speech on the relevance of recognition as a concept and potential tool for practitioners involved in conflict transformation.

In terms of results, three central hypotheses emerged from the conference: (i) Recognition is causal for conflict transformation, (ii) Non-recognition is an impediment to conflict transformation, and (iii) misrecognition might even be a cause of conflict escalation. In particular, the labelling of an actor as a terrorist group – as a drastic form of misrecognition – and consequent delegitimisation of both its claims and its actorness, minimises the prospects for conflict transformation. In this regard, the “global war on terror” stood out as among the most important normative frameworks within which (failing) recognition practices operate contemporarily.

Participants of the conference

Jan Boesten University of Oxford
Chien Peng Chung, Lingnan University Hong-Kong
Maéva Clément, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg
Christopher Daase, PRIF / Goethe University Frankfurt
Véronique Dudouet, Berghof Foundation Berlin
Anna Geis, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg
Carolin Görzig, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Halle
Christoph Günther, University of Mainz
Stephan Hensell, University of Hamburg
Annette Idler, University of Oxford
Tom Kaden, York University Toronto
Michael Nwankpa, University of Roehampton
Hanna Pfeifer, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg
Jamie Pring, University of Basel / Swisspeace
Gabi Schlag, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen
Klaus Schlichte, University of Bremen
Mitja Sienknecht, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Solène Soosaithasan, Université Lille 2
Harmonie Toros, Kent University

Publication

Anna Geis/Maéva Clément/Hanna Pfeifer (eds.) 2021: Armed non-state actors and the politics of recognition, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Three chapters are available as open access:
Recognising armed non-state actors. Risks and opportunities for conflict transformation
Recognition dynamics and Lebanese Hezbollah’s role in regional conflicts
Shifting recognition orders. The case of the Islamic State

IFF Project “Civic Participation in Foreign and Security Policy” (finished)

HSU

20. December 2021

Civic Participation in Foreign and Security Policy: Motivation, Processes, Results

Project team: Anna Geis / Hanna Pfeifer / Christian Opitz

Funding: HSU Internal Research Fund (IFF), July 2018-June 2019

Democratic foreign and security policy (FSP) has for a long time been regarded as a domain of the executive and as hardly accessible to participation beyond regular representative, parliamentary procedures. During the last years, though, a trend has emerged in some democracies to enhance citizens’ inclusion into deliberative and decision-making processes in the field of FSP. The goal of this project was to investigate the motivation, processes and results of these forms of citizen participation.

How, why and for what purpose do ministries initiate participatory processes in the field of FSP?
Which results emerge from different formats of participation have regarding policies, processes and institutions?
How do different groups of participants, i.e. citizens, experts, stakeholders, and representatives of the executive assess the outcomes of these processes?
How can such participatory processes in FSP be contextualised within democratic theory, i.e. how should they be judged regarding their normative quality, in particular the legitimacy and effectiveness of political decisions?
The work of this finished IFF-Project is expanded and deepened by our follow-up DFG-Project .

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Publications:

Opitz, Christian, Hanna Pfeifer, and Anna Geis 2022. “Engaging with Public Opinion at the Micro-Level: Citizen Dialogue and Participation in German Foreign Policy.” Foreign Policy Analysis 18(1): 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1093/fpa/orab033 .

Pfeifer, Hanna, Christian Opitz, and Anna Geis 2021. “Deliberating Foreign Policy: Perceptions and Effects of Citizen Participation in Germany.” German Politics 30(4): 485-502. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644008.2020.1786058 .

Anna Geis 2020. “Öffentlichkeit und Partizipation in der deutschen Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik.” Sicherheit und Frieden (S+F), 38(4): 185-187. https://doi.org/10.5771/0175-274X-2020-4-185 .

Anna Geis 2020. “Partizipative Formate in der deutschen Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik: die Politisierung des staatlichen Arkanbereichs?”, in: Andreas Schäfer/David Meiering (eds.): (Ent-)Politisierung? Die demokratische Gesellschaft des 21. Jahrhunderts, Baden-Baden: Nomos (Leviathan-Sonderband 35), 207-228. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783748904076-205 .

Anna Geis 2019. “The Illusion of a »Great Debate« about German Security Policy. A Plea for More Citizen Participation”, in: Gunther Hellmann/Daniel Jacobi (eds.): The German White Paper 2016 and the Challenge of Crafting Security Strategies, Frankfurt/Berlin: Report of the Goethe University and the Aspen Institute Germany, S. 77-88. http://www.fb03.uni-frankfurt.de/76345851/Band_Crafting_Security_Strategies_Aspen_englisch.pdf.

Anna Geis 2019. “Warten auf die große sicherheitspolitische Debatte in Deutschland? Jenseits von Defizitdiagnosen, Vermeidungsdiskursen, Erziehungskampagnen”, in: Daniel Jacobi/Gunther Hellmann (eds.): Das Weißbuch 2016 und die Herausforderungen von Strategiebildung, Wiesbaden: Springer VS (Edition ZfAS), S. 199-221. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-23975-6_14 .

Geis, Anna, and Hanna Pfeifer 2017. “Deutsche Verantwortung in der »Mitte der Gesellschaft« aushandeln? Über Politisierung und Entpolitisierung der deutschen Außenpolitik.” Politische Vierteljahresschrift Sonderheft 52: 218-243. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783845271934-219 .

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Conference Papers:

“The citizens’ turn in security policy: Promises and pitfalls of a new role for citizens in democratic security”, presented at the European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS) in Thessaloniki (online), June 2021.

“How should we normatively assess democratic quality in the field of FSP? A first approximation”, presented at the Annual International Conference of the Political Studies Association (PSA) in Belfast (online), March 2021.

“Politisierung von unten? Bürgerbeteiligung in der deutschen Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik”, presented at the Offene Tagung of the Section International Relations of the German Political Science Association (DVPW) in Freiburg (online), October 2020.

“Citizens Dialogues in Foreign Policy between Democratic Participation and Strategic Communication – Some Lessons Learned from the German case? “, presented at the European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS) in Kraków, June 2019.

“Negotiating Foreign and Security Policy at the »Heart of Society«? Evidence from Germany”, presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions in Mons (Belgium), April 2019.

“Negotiating Foreign and Security Policy at the »Heart of Society«? Evidence from Germany”, presented at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), April 2019.

DFG Researchers‘ Network „Visuality and Global Politics“

HSU

20. June 2020

DFG Researchers’ Network “Visuality and Global Politics”

Principal investigator and coordinator: Dr Gabi Schlag, Institute for International Politics, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg (zus. mit Dr Axel Heck, Universität Kiel)
Time frame: 2016-2018
http://visualityandglobalpolitics.com/

The political power of still and moving images has probably never been stronger than in today’s age of global media and social networks. Pictures and videos of war and conflict, images of displaced people, refugees and social inequality, cartographies of climate change and environmental disasters, videos depicting public riots, oppression and violence diffuse easily across national and cultural boundaries. They often become ubiquitous representations of political dynamics and global politics. Such visual representations circulating through mass media and social networks raise public attention, trigger emotions and shape our common knowledge about the world we are living in. But how can we assess the political significance of still and moving images? How can we analyze the content, scope and socio-political effects of (audio-) visual representations? How can we understand visuality in global politics in general?

The network aims at connecting researchers in Germany and the Netherlands in order to enhance and deepen our theoretical, methodological and research practical knowledge about visuality in global politics. By theorizing visuality, we refer to the various symbolic forms and practices of the visual and visualizing: still and moving images produced by different technologies, associated with various documentary and fictional genres and conventions, including video clips, films and documentaries, photographs, comics, cartoons, graffiti and street art paintings. As still and moving images are always representations of something or somebody, they are actively constructing meaning and knowledge. They do not replace the presence of subjects and objects but are performing their contingent re-presentations. History, however, shows that visual representations are not powerful per se. Some still and moving images become so memorable that they develop into internationally well-known and famous symbols and icons. Other images are less “iconic” but they are nevertheless reproduced in media, newspapers, and television – they are part of our daily live and shape our knowledge about political conflicts, natural disasters and humanitarian crises. It remains an open, yet theoretically and empirically relevant question how visual representations of global politics become politically powerful focal points and symbols. Due to the growing interest of international scholars to analyze still and moving images, the planned research network will establish a multidisciplinary conversation on theoretical, methodological and research practical challenges to “understanding visuality in global politics” in a systematic and critical way.

Publications:

Gabi Schlag/Axel Heck (eds.) 2020: Visualität und Weltpolitik. Praktiken des Zeigens und Sehens in den Internationalen Beziehungen, Wiesbaden: Springer VS (https://www.springer.com/de/book/9783658299705).

Anna Geis/Katarina Ristić 2020: Umstrittene Legitimität. Das Internationale Straftribunal für Ex-Jugoslawien (ICTY) als „Stimme der Menschheit“ und als „politisches Gericht“, in: Gabi Schlag/Axel Heck (eds.): Visualität und Weltpolitik. Praktiken des Zeigens und Sehens in den Internationalen Beziehungen, Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 89-120

Hanna Pfeifer/Christoph Günther 2020: ISIS und die Inszenierung von Kulturgüterzerstörung für ein globales Publikum, in: Gabi Schlag/Axel Heck (eds.): Visualität und Weltpolitik. Praktiken des Zeigens und Sehens in den Internationalen Beziehungen, Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 151-179.

DSF Project „‚Screening‘ Transitional Justice in Serbia“

HSU

31. July 2021

“Screening” Transitional Justice in Serbia. ICTY Representations and the Memory of War Crimes in Serb Television“

Full DSF Reasearch Report for be found here

Funding Organisation: German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF)

Principal Investigator: Prof Dr Anna Geis, Institute for International Politics, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg

Project Researcher: Dr Katarina Ristić, in cooperation with Dr Vladmir Petrović (Institute for Contemporary History in Belgrade)

Time frame: 13 months (Februar 2015 – March 2016)

Volume: 93.000 Euro

Abstract

Topic and research questions

The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), established in 1993, has been a central but very controversial element in the transitional justice processes in former Yugoslavia. In particular in Serbia the legitimacy of the ICTY is highly disputed. The project focuses on the public representation of the Tribunal in Serb television media. The investigation of the ICTY’s media representation will cover a number of much debated trials and probe the following questions: How are different persons acting in the court represented in footage? Are defendants described as actors representing the nation or as individual culprits standing outside of the respective community? To what extent do media sources represent the ICTY as an illegitimate institution or as a reliable source of judicial and historical “evidence”?

Relevance for peace and conflict research and originality of project

Analyzing the impact and perceived legitimacy of transitional justice mechanisms is an important part of peace and conflict research. Media representations that frame the ICTY as an illegitimate or an anti-Serb institution undermine the authority and the ability of the ICTY to promote the societal engagement with the past and to establish the historical “truth” about the wars of the 1990s. There is no systematic research on the reception of ICTY trials by audio-visual media outlets. In general, there is a striking lack of research on visual material in Peace and Conflict Studies that is not warranted given the prominent debate about the “power of images” in a digital age.

Theoretical and methodological approach

The project is located within transitional justice approaches. Scholarly debates on the ICTY revolve around the notion of impact and the conceptualization of impact. Of primary interest for this project is the public ‘educational’ role that the international institution may fulfill. The theoretical framework will thus also draw on studies that analyze the dynamic discursive processes of constructing collective memory in a society.

The research team will employ multimodal discourse analytical approaches in order to examine textual and audio-visual material. Since such approaches are scarce in Peace and Conflict Studies, the research team will further explore such an encompassing analysis of the discursive construction of the ICTY’s (il)legitimacy. It investigates news coverage and additional footage on ICTY trials of three Serb TV channels that attract the highest share of spectators: Radio-Televizija Serbia (RTS), RTV Pink and B92.

Research process

The data corpus for the project is very extensive so that the collection, selection and further reduction of data will be the first step of the empirical research. The data will be processed and transcribed so that a software based discourse analysis can be conducted. A detailed qualitative analysis of selected audio-visual elements and a comparison of data will follow these steps. In order to complement and validate the results of the discourse analysis, the researchers will conduct semi-structured expert interviews with representatives of the ICTY, of the Serb media and civil society organizations. In addition, focus group interviews with students in Serbia are expected to provide tentative insights into the perceptions of the media consumers.

Expected results and practical relevance

The goals of the project are:

to assess the perceived legitimacy of the ICTY in selected mass media of the Serb public;
to analyze discursive (persistent or changing) patterns of representations of the past;
to advance the analysis of visual media in Peace and Conflict Studies;
to establish cooperative relations with human rights activists and journalists in Serbia and to disseminate the research results to activists in the field.

List of project-related publications

Anna Geis/Katarina Ristić 2020: Umstrittene Legitimität. Das Internationale Straftribunal für Ex-Jugoslawien (ICTY) als „Stimme der Menschheit“ und als „politisches Gericht“, in: Gabi Schlag/Axel Heck (Hg.): Visualität und Weltpolitik. Praktiken des Zeigens und Sehens in den Internationalen Beziehungen, Wiesbaden: Springer VS, S. 89-120.

Katarina Ristić 2019: Accused War Criminals qua Perpetrators: Visual Signification of Criminal Guilt, in: Journal of Perpetrator Research, 2:2, 156-179.

Vladimir Petrović: The ICTY Library: War Criminals as Authors, Their Works as Sources, International Criminal Justice Review, 28:4, 2018, 333–348.

Vladimir Petrović: Power(lessness) of Atrocity Images: Bijeljina Photos between Perpetration and Prosecution of War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia, International Journal of Transitional Justice, 9:3, 2015, 367–385.

Katarina Ristić: Re-Enacting the Past in TV News on War Crime Trials: A Method for Analysis of Visual Narratives in Archival Footage, Media, War & Conflict, 2019, 1-20 (online first).

Katarina Ristić: Freed by the Court: The Role of Images Between Remembrance and Oblivion of War Crimes, Pólemos, 13:1, 2019, 91-108.

Katarina Ristić: The Media Negotiations of War Criminals and Their Memoirs: The Emergence of the “ICTY Celebrity”’, International Criminal Justice Review, 28:4, 2018, 391–405.

Katarina Ristić/Anna Geis/Vladimir Petrović: Caught between The Hague and Brussels: Millennials in Serbia on ICTY War Crimes Trials, in: Zeitgeschichte, 44:14, 2017, 49–65.

Katarina Ristić: Our Court, Our Justice – Domestic War Crime Trials in Serbia, in: Heike Karge, Ulf Brunnbauer, Claudia Weber (eds.): Erfahrungs- und Handlungsräume. Gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Südosteuropa seit dem 19. Jahrhundert zwischen dem Lokalen und dem Globalen, Oldenburg: De Gruyter, 2017, 165-185.

Conference papers and talks

Vladimir Petrović, “ICTY and the Balkans”, presented at the Association for Studies of Nationalism (ASN) Annual Convention, organized at Columbia University in April 2015.

Vladimir Petrović, “Powerlessness of Atrocity Images”, presented at the Digital Testimonies on War and Trauma, organized by Erasmus University Rotterdam in June 2015.

Katarina Ristić and Anna Geis, “Generation Y’s perception of ICTY trials in Serb media”, presented at the workshop “Generation On The Move – Children Of The 1990s in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo and Serbia”, in Rijeka, 9-10 October 2015.

Katarina Ristić, “Trials Stories vs. Media Stories in the Balkans”, presented at the Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, Philadelphia, 19-22 November 2015.

Anna Geis, “Können internationale Strafgerichtshöfe zur Versöhnung beitragen? Das Beispiel des Strafgerichtshofs zu Ex-Jugoslawien“, presented at the Colloquium of the Department of Political Science, University of Leipzig, 5 January 2016.

Vladimir Petrović, “Balkan Rashomon: The Yugoslav Conflict in International and National Prosecution”, presented at the colloquium “Mass Violence and Human Rights: The Global Politics of Truth and Justice” at the University of Massachusetts, Armherst, 5 February 2016.

Katarina Ristić, “War Crime Trials and Nationalism in the Balkans”, presented at the conference “Prime Time Nationalism: The Role of Television Broadcast/Archives in the Aftermath of the Yugoslav Wars”, Open Society Archives, Budapest, 13-14 May 2016.

Katarina Ristić, “Alleged War Criminals in TV – Visuals and Emotions”, presented at the conference “Representing Perpetrators of Mass Violence”, Utrecht, 31 August – 3 September 2016.

Katarina Ristić, “Legal ambiguity: Perpetrators in national and international war crime trials”, presented at the conference “On Collective Violence. Actions, Roles, Perceptions”, Centre for Conflict Studies of the Philipps University Marburg, 20-22 October 2016.

Vladimir Petrović, “Hubris of Themis: ICTY and the Balkans two decades after”, presented at the Central European University, Budapest, November 2016.

Katarina Ristić, “Narrating the self in (post-)ICTY diary writing – between nationalism, Yugoslavism and war crimes” and Vladimir Petrović “ICTY Library: War Criminals as Authors, their Writings as Sources”, both papers presented at the Sixth Annual Conference of the Historical Dialogues, Justice and Memory Network in Amsterdam (NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies, 1-3 December 2016).

Anna Geis/Katarina Ristić, “Können internationale Strafgerichtshöfe zur Versöhnung beitragen? Das Beispiel des Strafgerichtshofs zu Ex-Jugoslawien“, presented at the Colloquium of the Institute for Theology and Peace (ITHF), Hamburg, 27 April 2017.

Katarina Ristić, “Introduction to Multimodality – Social Semiotics. Copernican Turn in Semiotics under the Global Condition, presentet at the Workshop of the DFG Network “Visuality and Global Politics”, University of Kiel, 17-19 Mai 2017.

Katarina Ristić “Re-enacting the Past in the News – A Method for Analysing Archive Footage on Television”, presented at the 11th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, EISA, Barcelona, 12-15 September 2017.

Anna Geis “Der ICTY ein illegitimes Tribunal? Die Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit in Serbien aus Sicht der jungen Generation“, presented at the Fifth Open Section Conference of the Section ”International Relations” of the German Political Science Association (DVPW), University of Bremen, 4-6 October 2017.

Vladimir Petrović, “Dual Nature of Wartime Visuals”, presented at Salem State University Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies conference held in October 2017.