Researcher
Benjamin de Carvalho
Contactinfo and files
Summary
Benjamin de Carvalho is a research professor at NUPI, working in the Research group on Global Order and Diplomacy (GOaD). His research interests have, broadly speaking, been between three areas: (i) historical international relations, (ii) UN peacekeeping, and (iii) status in international relations.
Within these fields, he has published on issues of broader historical change such as the formation of the nation-state in Europe, sovereignty, and the role played by confessionalization and religion. He has also been involved in a number of projects on UN peacekeeping, and has worked on the protection of civilians and sexual and gender-based violence in Liberia, Chad, and the Sudans. He is also involved in projects addressing status as a key driver of foreign policy, focusing on Norway and Brazil. Central issues here are the role played by small states in international politics, emerging powers and great power responsibility. Other research interests include hegemony, popular culture and international relations theory.
De Carvalho is currently involved in work of more historical character. He is currently the Principal Investigator of Empires, Privateering and the Sea (EMPRISE), a project funded by the Research Council of Norway addressing the importance of privateering for the formation of overseas empires in the Atlantic (1556-1856). He is also the main collaborator in Conceptual History of International Relations (CHOIR), led by Halvard Leira.
In addition, de Carvalho has played an important role in the institutionalization of Historical International Relations as a subfield of the discipline of International Relations. Together with Leira, he was instrumental in setting up the Historical International Relations Section of the ISA, of which he has served as section program chair (2015-2017) and section chair (2017-2019). Leira and de Carvalho are also co-editors of the four-volume set Historical International Relations.
He is formerly a co-editor of the leading Scandinavian-language International Relations-journal Internasjonal Politikk.
Benjamin is Editor in Chief of the journal Cooperation and Conflict, 2023-2027.
Expertise
Education
2009 PhD in International Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
2001 MA, New School for Social Research, New York, USA
Work Experience
2006- PhD student/Senior Research Fellow/Research Professor, NUPI
Aktivitet
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Clear all filtersFrom the incoming editors: A leading International Relations journal with a Nordic touch
The new editors of Cooperation and Conflict introduce themselves and their aims for the journal going forward.
Re-gendering diplomacy (REGEND)
Why and how did official diplomacy become masculinized and practiced only by men? This is the core question motivating REGEND....
Mother of the Oceans: Elisabeth Mann Borgese and Ocean Governance
Join us when Lucian M. Ashworth visits NUPI on 21 May.
Whose Revisionism, Which International Order? Social Structure and Its Discontents
While the distinction between status quo and revisionist states is well established in International Relations, only more recently have scholars begun to refine the concept of revisionism itself, emphasizing that revisionism comes in different forms. A number of typologies have been introduced to capture this diversity. In this article, we offer a critique of these typologies, highlighting how many of these works elide the rule-governed and contextual nature of what counts as revisionism. Building on an understanding of international orders as social structures, we argue that the revisionist character of state conduct can only be determined with reference to the conception of the legitimate ends and means current in a particular international order. This leads us to distinguish between three types of revisionism: competitive revisionism that is transgressive of the legitimate means; creative revisionism that is transgressive of the legitimate ends; and revolutionary revisionism that is transgressive of legitimate ends and means. We further emphasize that determining the revisionist character of state conduct always involves interpretation and judgment. The concern for analytical precision conveyed by the development of different typologies of revisionism must therefore be followed by an equally deliberate concern for the politics of revisionism—in both theory and practice.
NUPI team to take over as editors of the prestigious journal Cooperation and Conflict
“Thinking about Unthinkability in World Politics” with Jennifer Mitzen
The NUPI Center for Historical International Politics (CHIP) invites you to a seminar where Prof. Jennifer Mitzen (Ohio State University) will present work in progress for her next book, “Thinking about Unthinkability in World Politics”.
Digital Sovereignty
Digital sovereignty is a relative newcomer, in spite of having become relatively well-entrenched in current policy discourses. In fact, as attacks on digital infrastructures – be they private or public – have become more fierce and frequent, it has become clear that the maintenance of national security largely presumes that a state is able to maintain its cyber security. Recourse to sovereignty in this matter also largely implies a willingness to deal with cybersecurity within the legal domain rather than the purely military one. Digital sovereignty does just that. It asserts national privilege as a matter of principle while at the same time keeping the issue at the level of criminal offence rather than a purely military one.
England's Cross of Gold: Keynes, Churchill, and the Governance of Economic Beliefs
The NUPI Center for Historical International Politics (CHIP) invites you to a seminar where Dr James Ashley Morrison (LSE) will present his latest book, " England's Cross of Gold: Keynes, Churchill, and the Governance of Economic Beliefs."
The Intercity Origins of Diplomacy: Consuls, Empires, and the Sea
City diplomacy is a fairly new topic in the study of diplomacy, and, many would argue, a fairly recent empirical phenomenon. A counterpoint to this could be to reference how the alleged origin of diplomacy in Greek antiquity was city-centered, as were the earliest forms of Renaissance diplomacy in Italy. In this article we want to probe the connections between cities and diplomacy through problematizing what has counted as diplomacy. Our starting point is that cities have always mattered to what we could analytically refer to as diplomatic practice. Being conscious of the conceptual ambiguities, we are thus not starting from a specific definition of “city diplomacy,” but from a conviction that cities have mattered and continue to matter to the practice of diplomacy.
Research group for Global Order and Diplomacy