The Higher Research Seminar: ‘The Logic of Ritual Action as the Logic of Deterrence’ – Maria Mälksoo, University of Copenhagen

Wednesdays 13.15 to 14.30 in Eden 367, unless otherwise indicated. 

Chair: Professor Robert Klemmensen

The Department’s Higher Research Seminar Series | Department of Political Science (lu.se)

Professor Maria Mälksoo, University of Copenhagen

Maria Mälksoo’s research foci are in Critical Security Studies (ontological security, securitization of historical memory, hybrid warfare); political anthropology (liminality, rituals), and the political practice of deterrence, with a focus on NATO’s eastern flank.

Prof. Mälksoo is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council's Consolidator Grant RITUAL DETERRENCE (Ritual Action: Making Deterrence Matter in International Security and Memory Politics, 2022-2027). She is also the PI of the University of Copenhagen team in the Volkswagen Foundation-supported MEMOCRACY consortium (The Challenge of Populist Memory Politics of Europe: Towards Effective Responses to Militant Legislation on the Past, 2021-2024).

She is the author of The Politics of Becoming European: A Study of Polish and Baltic Post-Cold War Security Imaginaries (Routledge, 2010); a co-author of Remembering Katyn (Polity, 2012); an editor of the JIRD Special Issue “Uses of ‘the East’ in International Studies: provincializing IR from Central and Eastern Europe” (2022) and the Handbook on the Politics of Memory (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Maria Mälksoo has been a visiting research fellow at the Centre of International Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science (2015), and Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (2012). She received her PhD in International Studies from the University of Cambridge (2008) and has previously worked at the University of Kent, Brussels School of International Studies (2016-2021); the University of Tartu, Estonia (2010-2016); International Centre for Defence and Security, Tallinn (2007-2010); the Estonian Ministry of Defence, and the Office of the President of Estonia.

She was the Executive Secretary of the European International Studies Association (EISA) in 2018-2021, and the President of the Central and East European International Studies Association (CEEISA) in 2019-2022. She is an Associate Editor of Review of International Studies (from 2024) and an editorial board member of the European Journal of International Relations, Global Studies Quarterly, Journal of Genocide Research and International Political Anthropology.