Biography

During my time as a Max Weber Fellow, I concluded my book on Fighting Terrorism and Drugs: Europe and International Police Cooperation (London and New York: Routledge, 2008).
I wrote a Max Weber Paper together with my mentor, Friedrich Kratochwil, which appeared in 2009 under the title “On Acting and Knowing: How Pragmatism Can Advance International Relations Research and Methodology” (International Organization 63/4, pp. 701-731).
Furthermore, I obtained a permanent post as University Lecturer at the Department of International Development (Queen Elizabeth House) of the University of Oxford, in association with St Cross College.
My Ph.D. was awarded in 2005 by the University of Munich for research on European Approaches to International Relations Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 2004).
Other key publications prior to my Max Weber Fellowship include ‘Defining the International Public Enemy’, Leiden Journal of International Law 19/1, 2006; and ‘The Meaning of New Medievalism’, European Journal of International Relations 7/4, 2001.
During my studies in Munich, Tübingen, Florence and Rome, I had received grants by the German Scholarship Foundation and from the State of Bavaria.
Before becoming a Max Weber Fellow, I had coordinated a research project on The Internationalization of the Monopoly of Force at International University Bremen, Germany. The project was directed by Markus Jachtenfuchs and received funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG).
In the context of that project, I pursued research on international police cooperation. The theoretical concern can be summarized the following way: What motivates states to cooperate, or prevents them from cooperating, with other states in the fight against terrorism and drugs? The current situation was compared with the situation in the 1960s and 1970s. The analytical focus was on four large European states: Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. Apart from its empirical content, my research has made a contribution to the theoretical debate on state preference formation.
Since then my research interests have broadened, but they remain concentrated in the fields of international relations and political sociology.