In June and July 2024, four of our doctoral students successfully defended their dissertations. We congratulate the graduates Anna-Katharina Ferl, Sascha Hach, Simone Schnabel und Rebecca Wagner.
In her dissertation, Anna Ferl examines the complex international process of regulating autonomous weapons systems (AWS) within the framework of the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons over the past decade. Drawing on insights from Science and Technology Studies and Critical Security Studies, Anna Ferl develops an unique theoretical framework to explore the complexities of regulating emerging weapons technologies in the field of autonomy and artificial intelligence. The study finds that the regulatory process has been stalled by two distinct, yet interrelated processes of knowledge production in the CCW. First, the increasing legalization of the discourse has made an international regulatory regime less likely, and second, AWS as emerging technologies allow for the development of diverse and contested imaginaries that have implications for what kind of regulation becomes possible. Anna Ferl will continue her research as post-doc at Standford University.
In his dissertation, Sascha Hach examines structures of rule in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and how these are challenged by the Humanitarian Initiative and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The alliance of non-nuclear-weapon states and civil society behind this initiative is conceived as a partly anti-colonial resistance movement that successfully utilizes subversive techniques to counter nuclear-weapon states' discursive and procedural domination. Drawn from the underlying qualitative interview data, the perceptions and evaluations of the resistance actors in particular were considered in the analysis. As Researcher, Sascha Hach will continue to work at PRIF on the “PATTERN: How Does te Past Matter? The Russian War of Aggression Against Ukraine and the Cold War” project.
The dissertations of Anna Ferl and Sascha Hach were developed as part of the research project “Perspectives of Arms Control”, which is organized jointly with the German Federal Foreign Office. As part of the project, doctoral students analyze current and future problems of arms control and identify opportunities for cooperation in this area in order to support politics in the long term with the best possible expertise from science.
Simone Schnabel dedicated her dissertation to local perceptions of legitimacy concepts and interventions by the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) – often accompanied by local protests against such regional interference. On one hand, the thesis investigates how staff at the respective Commissions and responsible for preparing and conducting interventions justify such endeavours including if and how they react to local critique. On the other hand, the project analyzed the AU and ECOWAS intervention in Burkina Faso in 2014/15 in order to evaluate how citizens in the affected countries perceive regional interventions. The dissertation is part of a PRIF research project on local perceptions of African regional interventions.
Rebecca Wagner's dissertation project focused on the shrinking of civic space during autocratization processes and elections. Her dissertation examined restrictions on civil society organizations (CSOs), how they respond, and what makes them resilient in the face of restrictions in electoral contexts. Empirically, the project used a mixed-methods convergent research design with an in-depth case study of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan and a global survey of citizen election observers. Overall, CSOs are responding with mainly resistance (and sometimes adaptation) strategies, and mainly structural and cognitive factors influence whether CSOs are more resilient when faced with restrictions during electoral processes. Rebecca Wagner has been a researcher at the University of Würzburg since October 2023.
