PhD Corner

Pojects

Julia Harfensteller

Title

Conceptual History at the United Nations: studying the idea of peace and its dynamics

Abstract

My dissertation project addresses one of the primary concerns of the United Nations (UN) %u2013 world peace. Based on the idea that the UN concept of peace has undergone a shift of meaning over time the project aims at tracking this conceptual change from the foundation of the organization in 1945 until now. To achieve an encompassing comprehension of the peace concept, it is deemed crucial to develop an innovative, multidimensional approach that transcends the horizon of a mere linguistic analysis, including elements of historical and political analysis.

The research project addresses fundamental questions concerning the study of international organisations, such as: How to conceptualize and study collective entities? How to take account of the time factor in the study of an organisation? How to integrate various dimensions of an international organisation in the investigative process, as for example the immaterial and the material dimension?

Although these issues pertain to the ontological underpinnings of IO/UN-related research and teaching, they have not yet been sufficiently and exhaustively considered by relevant academic circles. There is no need to say, that such challenging questions deserve more in-depth going attendance by researchers %u2013 in particular, if UN Studies aspires to be a future field of studies in its own right.

Research proposal: research_policy_paper.pdf

Resources and Links