Skip to main content

Staff Profile

Professor Hartmut Behr

Professor of International Politics

  • Email: hartmut.behr@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 5705
  • Address: Newcastle University
    International Politics, School of Geography, Politics, Sociology
    Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU
    Henry Daysh Building (formerly Claremont Bridge), R 4.24
Background

TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS


(International) Political Theory

o  Sociology of knowledge of the discipline of International Relations

o  The scholarship of Hans J Morgenthau

o  Political Ethics, Difference, and “Self”-“Other”-Relations

Peace and Conflict Studies

Political Cosmologies

Improvisation and Uncertainty: Epistemologies and Practices of the Unknown

 


Methods 

Interpretivist Methods

o  Text Hermeneutics

o  Archival Research

o  Policy Document Analysis (esp. Interpretation, Process Tracing)

Methodologies of

o  Intertextuality and Synoptic Reading

o  Translation


I am interested in the supervision of PhD students on the topics above, having guided 16 PhDs over the recent years to successful and timely completion. Working with younger researchers is a key part of my understanding of the profession, and co-authorship is an important element of this.


Many previous supervisees have moved on as Lecturers and Senior Lecturers at other universities and into Civil Servant schemes. I received Newcastle University's Teaching Award for PhD supervision in 2014.



Research

Currently I pursue three research projects: on


(1) "Improvisation, Temporalities, and Political Practice"


(2) Narratives of Belonging: Communities Under Stress


(3) Political Cosmologies: Non-Anthropocentrism and Policy Making in the Anthropocene




Please find below short descriptions of these projects:


(1) In contrast to rationalist action models, assumptions of stability, and their massive influences in the sciences and policy making (e.g., in Rawlsian and Habermasian legacies), there are only sporadic attempts in political and social sciences to conceptualise political action under conditions of uncertainty, contingency, and fluidity (such as foremost from Hannah Arendt, Hans Joas, Pierre Bourdieu, Zygmunt Baumann, Bruno Latour). This research focuses on forms of creativity under conditions of uncertainty and studies notions of improvisation as rituals and practices in music and dance. Key for this research is the relation of improvisation (understood as as non-prescribed acting together into an unforeseeable and unknown future) to theory-practice relationships with the aim to formulate lessons to be learned for, but not restricted to, policy-making in a world of political crisis and to political leadership. Management theory has already adopted improvisation in music, especially the work of US Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, as new form of creativity. Political sciences and International Relations seem to lack behind. Part of possible lessons from improvisation relate to the problem of cross-cutting temporalities and how they affect political practices. Theoretical reflections and empirical examples of on the relationship between political practice and temporality(ies) enrich the analogy to improvisation, the latter providing a possible practical example of navigating and coping creatively with intersecting (temporal) structures and non-knowledge. 


This research emerges from research and discussions in the international Research Network “Classical Realism Meets Critical Theory: Crises, Modernity, and the Return of Humanity, funded by The Leverhulme Trust (IN-2012-122), 2013-2015, as well as directly from my recent book on Reversibility – Politics under Conditions of Uncertainty, forthcoming with McGill-Queens University Press, 2024 (https://www.mqup.ca/reversibility-----politics-under-conditions-of-uncertainty-products-9780228020844.php?page_id=73&) where I have reflected on music improvisation as an action model for politics under conditions of epistemological uncertainty.



(2) This interdisciplinary research, based on several workshops and a Special Issue, investigates comparatively discourses and practices of identity formation in UK and Japan communities that experienced disaster situations due to climate change. The research team (political scientists, ethnographers, anthropologists, with civil engineers as consultants) will explore identity discourses during and in the aftermath of crises, working with community members and practitioners (like nurses, rescue workers, and local politicians), exploring their experiences, memories, and practices coping with emergency situations. Research questions are: How does community identity develop under stress? Does it fall apart into individual interests or strengthen? Are either temporary or enduring? What lessons can be learned? 


The need for disaster management will become more and more significant and increase in a world of poly-crises and climate change that will put communities worldwide at risk of survival and their lands at risk of habitability through man-made or natural catastrophes. In their response to disasters, hit communities can not solely rely on national rescue, medical, or energy support, but must develop place-based communal strategies. As newest research has shown, the success of respective strategies depends on communal cohesion and solidarity; put differently as underlying hypothesis of this research: The proficiency and success of disaster management and its distinct practical strategies depend upon the formation of communal identity and its conditioning of values such as cohesion, solidarity, and stamina. The most expensive and professionally devised humanitarian designs are at stake to come to nothing if the community’s identity is not receptive and responsive to them. This research does not focus on the study of emergency practices and humanitarian design products, but on discursive identity formation underlying and conditioning the success of these practices and designs.


(3) In a co-authored book project with Giorgio Shani, we search for non-anthropocentric conceptions of the place of the human, particularly in relation to other sentient beings. Conceptually speaking, this search brings together a wide array of renowned authors such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, Ilya Prigogine, Donna Haraway, Jane Bennett, Ulrich Beck, William Connolly, or Dipesh Chakrabarty. Current debates in Western societies on the Anthropocene and human made climate change have accelerated an argument that was made already some 45 years ago by Progogine and Stengers. They emphasised the equal and reciprocal togetherness of humans and all non-human environments and thus requested a non-anthropocentric understanding of the human. Non-anthropocentrism resonates with the language of reversibility suggested by Hans Jonas in his ethics of responsibility in a technological age and by Hannah Arendt, together with forgiveness and promise, as ethical virtues against the irreversibility of human action. We have been inspired by these discourses and explore cosmological discourses in Western and post-Western contexts.  














Past Research awards

 

International Research Network “Classical Realism Meets Critical Theory: Crises, Modernity, and the Return of Humanity”; Principal Investigator, funded by The Leverhulme Trust (IN-2012-122), 2013-2015

  

Research and Workshop Grant, “Reorienting Realism”, funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Principal Investigator together with Sean Molloy, 2012/2013

 

US-UK Fulbright Commission, Scholar in Residence Award, Spring 2009 (withdrawn by nominee)

Teaching Fellowship, funded by German Academic Exchange Service DAAD (2008), for a two week course on “The EU as Global Actor” at the University of Kiev/Mohyla Academy

 

Research Fellowship, “Arabic and EU discourses on the root causes of terrorism violence”, funded by the British Academy, Co-Investigator, 2006

 

Research Fellowship, ““Global Cities” and the transnational accumulation of political power: Tokyo, Berlin, Washington (DC)”, funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JSPS, 2004/2005 (host university: University of Tsukuba)

 

Research Grant, “Entterritoriale Politik – Von den Internationalen Beziehungen zur Netzwerkanalyse”, funded by the German Research Council, Principal Investigator, 2001-2003

 

Feodor Lynen Research Fellow, “Entterritoriale Politik”, funded by the Alexander of Humboldt – Foundation, Principal Investigator, 2000/2001 (host university: University of Pittsburgh)

 

Research Grant, “Immigration in the Nation State: US, France, Germany”, funded by the German Marshall Fund, Principal Investigator, 1994

 

Research Grant for PhD thesis, “Immigration in the Nation State: US, France, Germany”, Principal Investigator, funded by the Friedrich Ebert – Foundation (1992)

 

Book Awards of the Geschwister Böhringer Foundation for Liberal Arts and Humanities, Ingelheim/Rhein (Germany) for

- Zuwanderungspolitik im Nationalstaat (PhD thesis/monograph)

- Entterritoriale Politik (post-doc „Habilitation“ thesis/monograph)

- Säkularisierung und Resakralisierung in westlichen Gesellschaften (edited volume)


Several smaller conference, workshop, and travel grants

 

 

 

            


Teaching

Feedback and Consultation Hours, 2nd semester 2024/25


Wednesday 10-12 pm (HDB 4.24)

Tuesday 11-12 (HDB 4.24)


Undergraduate Teaching


POL 3081 International Political Thought

POL 2082 Political Violence and the Modern State


Postgraduate Teaching


POL8069 Studying International Relations: Key Challenges



Publications