Team
Core Team
Ingvild Bode
Principal Investigator
Areas of expertise
Norm emergence and change | Use of force | United Nations | Peacekeeping | Practice theories in International Relations
Ingvild Bode
Principal Investigator
Areas of expertise
Norm emergence and change | Use of force | United Nations | Peacekeeping | Practice theories in International Relations
Dr Ingvild Bode is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for War Studies at the Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark. Previously she was Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Kent, Canterbury (2015-2020) and a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) International Research Fellow (postdoc) with joined affiliation at United Nations University and the University of Tokyo (2013-2015). She has also lectured at Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Germany (2008-2012), where she was a research fellow and completed her PhD in 2013.
Ingvild’s research agenda covers the area of peace and security, with a theoretical focus combining practice theories and constructivist International Relations. She is principally interested in analysing processes of policy and normative change, especially in the areas of weaponised artificial intelligence, the use of force, United Nations peacekeeping, and more general dynamics of the UN Security Council.
Ingvild has published extensively in these areas, including in journals such as the European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, Global Studies Quarterly, and International Studies Review. She is the author of Individual Agency and Policy Change at the United Nations (Routledge, 2015) and the co-author of Governing the Use-of-Force: The Post-9/11 US Challenge on International Law (Palgrave, 2014, with Aiden Warren) and Autonomous Weapons Systems and International Norms (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022, with Hendrik Huelss).
AutoNorms research focus
Within the AutoNorms project, Ingvild Bode develops the analytical framework combining critical norm research and practice theories. She also focuses on the transnational political debate on weaponised AI (chiefly at the UN GGE on LAWS), works on the case of Japan and provides input to all other country cases. She supervises Anna Nadibaidze’s PhD research.
Hendrik Huelss
Senior Researcher (Honorary)
Areas of expertise
Norms | Governmentality | EU external relations | Poststructuralist and constructivist IR Theory
Hendrik Huelss
Senior Researcher (Honorary)
Areas of expertise
Norms | Governmentality | EU external relations | Poststructuralist/constructivist IR Theory
Dr Hendrik Huelss is Assistant Professor at the Center for War Studies and Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark. From 2016 to 2020, he was Postdoctoral Researcher at the School for Politics and International Relations, University of Kent. Hendrik holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen.
Hendrik’s research combines an interest in norms in International Relations with perspectives on technologies in politics. His primary theoretical background is Foucault’s governmentality, but he is broadly interested in constructivist/poststructural works in the fields of security studies, European Union external relations, as well as global governing and IR theory in general.
Hendrik has published on these research themes in journals such as International Political Sociology, International Theory, Journal of International Relations and Development, and Review of International Studies. He is also co-author of Autonomous Weapons Systems and International Norms (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022, with Ingvild Bode).
AutoNorms research focus
Within the AutoNorms project, Hendrik Huelss contributes to the development of the analytical framework combining critical norm research in IR with viewpoints on governmentality and practices. He also focuses on the project case study of the US and on how norms on autonomous weapons emerge and transform across four domains of practices (military, transnational political, dual-use and popular imagination).
Anna Nadibaidze
Researcher (Honorary)
Areas of expertise
International security | International organisations | Russian foreign policy | Discourse analysis | Identity and status in IR
Anna Nadibaidze
Researcher (Honorary)
Areas of expertise
International security | International organisations | Russian foreign policy | Discourse analysis | Identity and status in IR
Dr Anna Nadibaidze is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for War Studies and the Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Southern Denmark. Her research interests include AI and emerging technologies in global security, Russian foreign policy, as well as the role of identity, status-seeking, and discourse in IR.
Her work has been published in Journal of International Relations and Development, Contemporary Security Policy, and Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, among others.
AutoNorms research focus
Within the AutoNorms project, Anna Nadibaidze focuses on the case of Russia. She also observes and analyses how AWS practices manifest and transform within four contexts (military, transnational political, dual-use and popular imagination).
Qiaochu Zhang
Postdoctoral Researcher
Areas of expertise
Chinese foreign policy | Norm contestation | United Nations | Security studies | Human protection
Qiaochu Zhang
Postdoctoral Researcher
Areas of expertise
Chinese foreign policy | Norm contestation | United Nations | Security studies | Human protection
Dr Qiaochu Zhang is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for War Studies and Department of Political Science and Public Management at the University of Southern Denmark. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Manchester, an MA in International Relations from King’s College London, and an LLB in International Politics from Fudan University. She was the convenor of the Early Career Researcher Workshops at the Manchester China Institute from 2022 to 2023.
Qiaochu’s research interests span norm theory, Chinese foreign policy, United Nations politics, and security studies. Her work has been published with International Affairs.
AutoNorms research focus
Within the AutoNorms project, Qiaochu Zhang focuses on the case of China. She examines how norms and practices of AWS manifest and transform across the domains of military, transnational politics, dual-use, and popular imagination in this case.
Guangyu Qiao-Franco
Senior Researcher (Honorary)
Areas of expertise
Norm diffusion | Policy transfer | International organisations | Use of force | Non-traditional security issues | China studies | Southeast Asia studies
Guangyu Qiao-Franco
Senior Researcher (Honorary)
Areas of expertise
Norm diffusion | Policy transfer | International organisations | Use of force | Non-traditional security issues | China studies | Southeast Asia studies
Dr Guangyu Qiao-Franco is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Political Science Department of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for War Studies and Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark (2021-2023), as well as head tutor of political science and early career researcher at the University of Melbourne (2019-2021). She holds a PhD degree in International Relations from the University of Melbourne.
Guangyu is principally interested in China studies, ASEAN studies, international organisations, the agency of the Global South in international politics, and emerging technologies. Her research leverages practice theory, norm contestation, norm diffusion, and actor-network theories to interpret legal and foreign policy instruments of developing countries.
Her work has been published in International Affairs, The Pacific Review, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, and Journal of Contemporary China, among others. She is the author of the book UN-ASEAN Coordination: Policy Transfer and Regional Cooperation Against Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia (Edward Elgar, 2023).
AutoNorms research focus
Within the AutoNorms project, Guangyu Qiao-Franco focuses on the case of China. She is exploring new theoretical approaches such as synthesising practice theories, constructivist international relations theories, and assemblage thinking to understand how norms on AWS manifest and transform across four domains of practices (military, transnational political, dual-use and popular imagination) in China. She also assesses the impact of China’s AWS positions on international policy development in this context.
Tom Watts
Senior Researcher (Honorary)
Areas of expertise
American foreign and security policy | Remote warfare | Lethal autonomous weapons systems
Tom Watts
Senior Researcher (Honorary)
Areas of expertise
American foreign and security policy | Remote warfare | Lethal autonomous weapons systems
Dr Tom Watts is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London, leading a project on Great Power Competition and Remote Warfare. Previously, he was a Teaching Fellow in War and Security at RHUL (2018-2020) and a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Kent (2014-2018). Tom graduated with a PhD in International Relations from the University of Kent in 2019.
Tom’s research interests are in the field of International Security with a particular focus on American foreign policy, “remote warfare”, and autonomous weapons systems. His research has been published with Geopolitics, Global Affairs, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Drone Wars UK, and the Oxford Research Group.
AutoNorms research focus
Tom is a contributor to AutoNorms. He is responsible for creating open-source catalogues of the integration of automated and autonomous features into the critical functions of various weapon systems, including, for example, air defence systems and loitering munitions. Through his research specialisations in American foreign policy and the character of contemporary politics, he also makes a wider contribution to AutoNorms’ research.
Project Associates
Dr Trine Flockhart, Professor, European University Institute
Dr Heigo Sato, Professor, Institute of World Studies, Takushoku University, Japan
Dr Hirofumi Tosaki, Center for Disarmament, Science and Technology, Japan Institute of International Affairs, Japan