Anna Leander

Anna Leander's research focuses on practices of world politics, and more specifically on practices of (in)security. She is particularly interested in the politics of commercialising military and security matters. In fact, Anna is deeply concerned with the militarisation of politics and its far reaching implications. In her current writing and research projects she is therefore looking closely at practices through which this evolving politics is enacted as well as at how it might be countered. She concentrates on the place of socio-material, affective sensemaking practices. Anna has developed work exploring the significance of legal/regulatory norms and documents, digitally mediated communication, and the politics of knowledge that makes this significance (in)visible (for an overview of publications). She does this work at the intersection of science and technology studies, international political sociology, critical legal studies and digital media studies. In addition to this, she is involved in a range of collaborative projects revolving around these questions, including most centrally the VIPRE (The Violence Prevention Initiative) and NordSTEVA (Nordic Centre of Excellence for Security Technologies and Societal Values).

In January 2018 Anna Leander joined the Department of International Relations and Political Science at the Graduate Institute in Geneva as Professor of International Relations. At the institute she has found an exciting and inspiring transdisciplinary environment with many excellent colleagues and interesting research platforms including the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy and the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding to develop her research. She also holds a position at the Institute of International Relations at PUC, Rio de Janeiro. Prior to joining the Graduate Institute she was affiliated with at the Department of Politics, Management, and Philosophy at the Copenhagen Business School, at the Department of Political Science at the University of Southern Denmark (Odense), and at the Political Science Department, Central European University. She has also held visiting positions at Cornell University (Ithaca, New York), the Collegio Carlo Alberto (Torino, Italy) and the Hanse Wissenschafts-Kolleg (Delmenhorst, Germany).

Research is a collective endeavour where collegial inspiration and support are of essence. She has therefore long been active outside of institutions and formal obligations to reinforce the research infrastructure in her area, for example through editorial work, by participating in academic advisory boards, review panels, research councils, professional associations and processes of advising and commenting on colleagues and on work by early career researchers. She has participated in more than 40 PhD committees. At present, she is co-editing (with Ann Sartori (MIT)) the Cambridge Elements in International Security and (with Elke Krahmann) the Routledge Series in Private Security as well as acting as a member of the advisory boards of a number of book series and journals including Security Dialogue and International Political Sociology. She is also vice-chair of the academic board of the GIGA and a member of the board of the EISA.