Professor Christian Bueger

Honorary Research Fellow

: Media commentator

Dr. Christian Bueger is Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Relations, Cardiff University. He joined Cardiff as a Lecturer in 2012. He obtained his PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute, Florence, Italy (2010).

His fields of research are Security Studies, International Political Sociology, International Organizations, and Sociology of Science and Expertise. He is currently the principal investigator of the project "SAFE SEAS. A study of maritime capacity building in the Western Indian Ocean" funded by the British Academy. Prior he worked on the project "Counter-Piracy Governance - A Praxiographic Analysis" funded by a Future Research Leader grant of the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council [ES/K008358/1]. He is also one of the lead investigators of the Lessons Learned Consortium of the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia . He is the lead editor (Europe) of the European Journal of International Security (Cambridge UP) and a co-editor of Piracy-studies.org – The Research Portal for Maritime Security. His research has featured in different media, including, among others, ITV, The Guardian, Africa Renewal, Veja or The New Internationalist. He is a regular speaker at events on maritime security and international relations. Further information is available at his private website.

Christian Bueger’s research is in the following fields:

International organizations and global governance
Maritime security and contemporary piracy
International relations theory and its link to contemporary social theory
Sociology of science and expertise
Regional dynamics in the Western Indian Ocean

From 2013-2016 he was working on an ESRC funded research project titled “Counter-Piracy Governance – A Praxiographic Analysis”. The project combined insights from international practice theory with an interpretive methodology (praxiography) to study the international responses to piracy, in particular in the Western Indian Ocean. Action research initiated as part of the project is ongoing. This is in the form of a lessons learned project for the main global governance body on piracy, the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia. A core dimension is to understand the knowledge and expertise that underpins the practices of counter-piracy governance. More recently, he has started to focus on surveillance and so-called Maritime Domain Awareness, as well as Maritime Security Sector Reform as new types of international practices. Since 2017 he conducts this research in the frame of the project Safe Seas. A Study of Maritime Security Capacity Building in the Western Indian Ocean funded by the British Academy's Sustainable Development Programme.

My teaching profile includes core approaches to International Relations with emphasis on the theory and problems of international organization and international security. In the past I have planned and taught an ‘Introduction to International Security’ with a focus on contemporary (critical) security theory (2nd year) and ‘Conflict, Security & Development’ centred on the practical problems in post-conflict situations (3rd year), as well as a 2nd year methods course. At post-graduate level I have taught modules on 'Research Methods', ‘Theories of Global Governance’, ‘Critical Policy Studies’, ‘Approaches to Knowledge Generation’ and a research-oriented module on ‘Maritime Security and Contemporary Piracy’ linked to my ongoing research.

At present, I am supervising three PhD students, which work on maritime security in the Mediterranean, media development policies in post-conflict situations, and maritime security strategies.I offer supervision for highly motivated students who want to work on MSc or PhD projects that are directly linked to my research interests (see research). In particular, I am interested in research projects in the following areas:

International practice theory and its relation to discourse theories and constructivism,
Sociology of science and expertise in international relations,
Maritime security and ocean governance, in particular in relation to global processes and international organizations and/or the African continent.

Christian Bueger is Reader in International Relations. Before joining Cardiff as a Lecturer in 2012 he was a Leverhulme fellow at the Greenwich Maritime Institute, London and a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Development and Peace, Duisburg. He received his PhD from the European University Institute in 2010. During his PhD studies he was a visiting researcher at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA and a research assistant to the European Report on Development 2009. Prior he graduated as a Diplom-Politologe from the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and worked at the Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt am Main and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt.

He is a honorary fellow of the University of Seychelles and a research fellow at the University of Stellenbosch. He was a visiting fellow at the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy, University College London (2015), the Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore (2015), the Institute for Political Science, Copenhagen University (2014), and the Centre for Advanced Security Theory (CAST), University of Copenhagen (2013).