My research interests lie at the intersection of International Relations and international history and focus primarily on international organisations. I examine international organisations from a historical perspective and address the broader questions of what the emergence and development of international organisations can tell us about the developments of global order, what kind of actors international organisations are, and how they and their representatives gain autonomy.

My DPhil dissertation examined the development of the autonomous role of the UN secretary-general during the tenure of the first secretary-general, Trygve Lie (1946-1953). This research formed the basis for my monograph published with Bristol University Press in January 2023. I have since broadened the focus on the UN secretary-general with a chapter comparing Lie and Dag Hammarskjöld (UNSG 1953-1961), and a more conceptual paper on what it means that the UN secretary-general is a “guardian” of the UN Charter.

A second strand of my research adopts a longer timeframe and wider approach to analyse the historical development of international organisations as part of broader developments of the global order. Starting from the emergence of the first international organisations in the 19th century and tracing changes in IGO membership policies into the post-1945 period, one published article argues that the adoption of the sovereignty criterion for membership of IGOs, and by extension the international system, eventually came about at the urging of non-Western states. Thus, paradoxically, one of the core institutions of the supposedly “European” international system - sovereign equality - was realised at the hands of non-European actors.

International Organisations, States, and Sovereignty in the 19th Century

What kinds of actors are international organisations? How do they gain autonomy? Are international organisations necessarily a threat to state sovereignty or can they help strengthen the state? As part of the STANCE project in the Department of Political Science at Lund University, I embarked on a research project that addresses these questions by focusing on the emergence of the first international organisations and their secretariats in the 19th century.

I study two interrelated aspects of international organisations: (1) what the emergence and development of international organisations can tell us about broader developments of global order, and (2) what kinds of actors such organisations are and how they and their representatives have attained positions of influence in world politics.

Intergovernmental organisations offer an alternative way of measuring membership of the international system. Today such organisations by definition have sovereign states as members, to the extent that membership of the United Nations has become a proxy for sovereign statehood. Yet the first intergovernmental organisations established from the 1860s operated with more inclusive membership policies and allowed both colonies and so-called semi-sovereign states to participate on an equal basis with sovereign states. What was the basis for this more inclusive international order? How did the transition from this inclusive order to the 20th century order based on the sovereign state take place? How did the first intergovernmental organisations established with inclusive membership policies deal with the shift to an order based on the primacy of state sovereignty? How could non-European states take advantage of the new intergovernmental organisations to establish their claim to statehood?

A second strand of this research looks at the question of what kinds of actors international organisations are, and how they gain autonomy. For this project I look at the first permanent secretariats of 19th century IGOs and examine how much autonomy they had from member states and host governments, and their independent relations with each other and established experts in the field.

So far I've published an article on IGO membership in the Review of International Studies, a working paper on IGO membership (available here), a working paper on the ITU Secretariat (available here), and a book chapter on non-European membership of IOs.
 

In the Beginning: Secretary-General Trygve Lie and the Establishment of the United Nations

“I had no calculated plan for developing the political powers of the office of Secretary-General, but I was determined that the Secretary-General should be a force for peace. How that force would be applied I would find out – in the light of developments.” 
          Trygve Lie, 1954

The UN Charter describes the secretary-general merely as "the chief administrative officer of the Organization," but today it is widely recognised that he plays a number of political and diplomatic roles in world politics. How did this development come about? This book reviews the formative years of the United Nations (UN) under its first Secretary-General Trygve Lie. It shows how the foundations for an expanded secretary-general role were laid during this period, and that Lie’s contribution was greater than has later been acknowledged. The interplay of crisis decision-making, institutional constraints and the individuals involved thus built the foundations for the UN organization we know today. Addressing important wider questions of IGO creation, governance and autonomy, this is an incisive account of how the UN moved from paper to practice under Lie.

Table of contents:
Introduction
1) Setting the Stage: The Creation of the UN and Expectations for the Role of the UN Secretary-General
2) Establishing Precedents: The Iranian Crisis, UN membership and the Greek Civil War, 1946
3) Urging Forceful Action: ‘The Palestine Problem’ and Management of Regional Conflicts, 1947-49
4) Building Bridges: The Cold War from Berlin to Korea, 1947-50
5) Advocating Global Interests: Trygve Lie’s Peace Plan, 1950
6) Administering the International: The International Civil Service and the UN Secretariat, 1946-53
Conclusion

This book is based on my DPhil dissertation (University of Oxford, 2015). The dissertation and book utilises extensive collections of primary documents from Trygve Lie’s private archive, the UN archive, the American, British, and Norwegian national archives, as well as the private papers after Andrew Cordier and Ralph Bunche. The conceptual framework develops a model for understanding the ‘role’ of the UN secretary-general inside the UN ‘institution’ based on institutional theory.

I've also published three articles based on the same material: two case studies on Israel/Palestine, and the Cold War, and a general summary of the argument, and have since broadened the focus on the UN secretary-general with a chapter comparing Lie and Dag Hammarskjöld (UNSG 1953-1961), and a more conceptual paper on what it means that the UN secretary-general is a “guardian” of the UN Charter.