Researcher
Minda Holm
Contactinfo and files
Summary
Minda Holm is a Senior Research Fellow with the research group Global Order and Diplomacy. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen (September 2023), a monography on ideology in global politics titled Towards a Social Theory of International Ideology, Ideological Scripts, and Counter-Ideology: Rethinking Liberal International Order and the Far Right’s critique.
Holm does social- and political theoretical work on liberalism in global politics (historically and present), anti-liberal forces globally including the far right’s global visions, global order, ideology, state ideals and sovereignty. She has also done research and published on Norwegian, Russian and U.S. foreign policy, misrecognition, morality in global order, international conceptual history and diplomacy.
She is an editor of the Scandinavian-language IR journal Internasjonal Politikk, an Associate Editor of New Perspectives, and from June 2024 an Associate Editor of Cooperation and Conflict. Holm also has a monthly column in the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen. As of fall 2023 she is working on the Research Council-funded projects CHOIR and ANGER.
See her personal webpage for more, including publications.
Expertise
Education
2018 – 2023 PhD, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. Submitted November 2022, defended after maternity leave September 2023.
2015 – 2016 MA George Washington University, USA (Fulbright scholar)
2013 – 2014 MSc London School of Economics and Political Science, England
2008 – 2013 BA (2, in parallel), Political Science and Russia studies, University of Oslo and American University in Cairo, Oslo/Egypt
Main work experience
2023 – Senior Research Fellow, NUPI
2018 – 2022 PhD Fellow, NUPI, University of Copenhagen and Danish Institute of International Studies (DIIS)
2017 – 2018 Research Fellow, NUPI
2012 – 2017 Research Assistant, NUPI (fulltime from January 2016)
2012 – 2012 Intern, Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Tajikistan
2010 – 2011 Trainee, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kazakhstan (covering all of Central Asia)
2009 – 2010 Journalist, Radio Nova
Aktivitet
Filter
Clear all filtersLiberale verdifellesskap og selvbilder i praksis: Hvordan Norge gikk til krig og hva vi kan lære
(In norwegian only) Hvilke lærdommer kan vi trekke av bombingen av Libya i 2011? Var krigføringen i tråd med krigens folkerett? Brøt norske myndigheter grunnloven i forbindelse med krigsdeltagelsen? Levde media opp til sitt samfunnsoppdrag så lenge krigføringen i Libya pågikk? Ble det norske folk holdt for narr om de egentlige årsakene til krigen? Og hva ble konsekvensene av Libya-krigen for nasjonen Libya, regionen og verdenssamfunnet? Libya: Krigens uutholdelige letthet setter et kritisk søkelys på Norges deltagelse i den Nato-ledete operasjonen i Libya. Blant forfatterne finner vi folkerettsjurister, historikere, militære, statsvitere og professorer i journalistikk og fredsforskning. Et felles utgangspunkt for alle bidragsyterne er spørsmålet om hva norske politikere, militære og det norske folk kan og bør lære av Norges første krig i Afrika.
Russland og det ytre høyre
(Available in Norwegian only): Båndene mellom Russland og ytre høyre i Europa er mer kompliserte enn man kan få inntrykk av i vestlig media, skriver Minda Holm i denne kronikken.
Tungt skyts
(Available in Norwegian only): Minda Holm anmelder Jon Hellesnes’ bok ‘NATO-komplekset: Om militærpolitikk, atomvåpen og norsk USA-servilitet’ i Klassekampens bokmagasin. Holm skriver her om de sannhetene som tas for gitt i norsk sikkerhets- og forsvarspolitikk, deriblant forholdet til USA og NATO. Hva er effekten av at Forsvarsdepartementet finansierer så mye av forskningen på norsk forsvarspolitikk?
Mutual Lack of Introspection and the ‘Russia Factor’ in the Liberal West
Minda Holm makes three claims in this article: one about the representation of Russia as an external enemy and the reflex to blame Russia for unwanted domestic developments; one about the liberal Western Self’s continuous violation of the principles it judges others by; and one about the seemingly deliberate lack of critical introspection amongst Russian and Western elites. The Western Self is largely viewed as liberal by default, irrespective of the extensive illiberal actions – seen in, for example, the post-9/11 era. Whereas politics is messy and full of contradictions, Western liberal morality is often presented as somehow standing monolithically above those contradictory actions: despite torture, a secret extraordinary rendition and detention program and wide-ranging breaches of international law, the US Self under Bush Jr. remained decidedly ‘good’. Whilst the Self’s identity as liberal persists despite violating those liberal principles, states such as Russia are stigmatized for the same types of violations. That this creates frustration with those defined as standing on the outside or, better, denied access to the true inside, should not come as a surprise. But, Russia’s continuous denialism and whataboutism, and the role of academics in this negative cycle, doesn’t bode well for the future of Russia-West relations.
Farlige forbindelser?
Den påståtte koblingen mellom franske høyrenasjonalister og Kreml er overdrevet. Men de felles interessene er der.
Taliban i Moskva og Doha
Forrige uke møttes en delegasjon fra Taliban og sentrale afghanske politikere til samtaler i Moskva. Møtet var det mest omfattende av sitt slag siden 2001, året da USA gikk til krig mot Taliban. Møtet kom like etter at Taliban har vært i banebrytende forhandlinger med USA i seks dager i Doha, Qatar. For første gang ble Taliban og USA enige om et utkast til et mulig rammeverk for fred.
A Conceptual History of International Relations (CHOIR)
The purpose of CHOIR is to investigate taken-for-granted concepts of international relations....
Forum: In the beginning there was no word (For It): Terms, concepts, and early sovereignty
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the concept sovereignty for international relations (IR). And yet, understanding the historical emergence of sovereignty in international relations has long been curtailed by the all-encompassing myth of the Peace of Westphalia. While criticism of this myth has opened space for further historical inquiry in recent years, it has also raised important questions of historical interpretation and methodology relevant to IR, as applying our current conceptual framework to distant historical cases is far from unproblematic. Central among these questions is the when, what, and how of sovereignty: from when can we use “sovereignty” to analyze international politics and for which polities? Can sovereignty be used when the actors themselves did not have recourse to the terminology? And what about polities that do not have recourse to the term at all? What are the theoretical implications of applying the concept of sovereignty to early polities? From different theoretical and methodological perspectives, the contributions in this forum shed light on these questions of sovereignty and how to treat the concept analytically when applied to a period or place when/where the term did not exist as such. In doing so, this forum makes the case for a sensitivity to the historical dimension of our arguments about sovereignty—and, by extension, international relations past and present—as this holds the key to the types of claims we can make about the polities of the world and their relations.
States before relations: On misrecognition and the bifurcated regime of sovereignty
The symbolic structure of the international system, organised around sovereignty, is sustained by an institutional infrastructure that shapes how states seek sovereign agency. We investigate how the modern legal category of the state is an institutional expression of the idea of the state as a liberal person, dependent on a one-off recognition in establishing the sovereign state. We then discuss how this institutional rule co-exists with the on-going frustrated search for recognition in terms of socio-political registers. While the first set of rules establishes a protective shield against others, regardless of behaviour, the second set of rules specify rules for behaviour of statehood, which produces a distinct form of misrecognition. States are, at one level, already recognised as sovereign and are granted rights akin to individuals in liberal thought, and yet they are continually misrecognised in their quest to actualise the sovereign agency they associate with statehood. We draw on examples from two contemporary phenomena - fragile states, and assertions of non-interference and sovereignty from the populist right and non-Western great powers, to discuss the misrecognition processes embedded in the bifurcated symbolic structure of sovereignty, and its implications for debates about hierarchy and sovereignty in world affairs.
Hatet mot George Soros
(Available in Norwegian only): Ingen enkeltperson er hatet så mye av både det nasjonalistiske og ekstreme høyre som ungarsk-amerikanske George Soros.