Research Priorities

Our research focuses on the intersection between environmental, climate and development politics and addresses institutional questions concerning developing countries and emerging markets. Aside from work on Climate Engineering, politicization of climate politics and the role of standards, we pursue the following topics in particular:

What effect do global developments such as technologization and climate change have on political violence? How can political violence be limited or legitimized by international institutions? How is it interpreted and justified? These are the questions addressed by the new interdisciplinary joint project “Regional Research Center – Transformations of Political Violence (TraCe)”, in which the TU Darmstadt is participating. A total of five Hessian research institutes are working together here. From the side of TUDa, Professor Sybille Frank (Institute of Sociology), Professor Nicolai Hannig (Institute of History), Professor Markus Lederer (Institute of Political Science) and Professor Christian Reuter (Department of Computer Science, Working Area Science and Technology for Peace and Security) are participating as Principal Investigators. They are conducting research in particular in the first and third research

The research group International Relations at the Institute of Political Science, headed by Professor Markus Lederer, will focus on political violence in the context of the environment and climate change and will examine the forms and mechanisms of environmental conflicts. Furthermore, we plan to analyse the interrelations between activists and repressive state/non-state institutions as well as comparative case studies on the radicalization of environmental activists with a focus on transnational networks. The aim of the joint project is to identify the consequences of current transformations in violence for peace within society and internationally and to develop strategies for containing political violence under changing conditions.

Team:

  • Prof. Dr. Markus Lederer
  • Verena Lasso Mena, M.A.

Organizational Information

Cooperation partner: Bundesministerium für Forschung und Bildung (BMBF)

Duration: 01.04.2022 – 31.03.2026

Inaugural event “A New Old War? The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the transformation of political violence?” of the research center “Transformations of Political Violence” (TraCe)

On 13th December 2022, the inaugural event “A New Old War? The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the transformation of political violence?” of the research center “Transformations of Political Violence” (TraCe) took place in Berlin. The recording of the event is now available on the TraCe YouTube-Kanal.

During the kick-off event, scholars and practitioners exchanged views on the Russian war of aggression in two panels. Prof. Dr. Christopher Daase moderated the first panel on the transformation of political violence from a scientific perspective. In the second panel, Prof. Dr. Markus Lederer of the Technical University of Darmstadt moderated the political discourse on national security strategy and how it is affected by climate change and energy security issues.

Further information is available on the project Website.

Welcome to the new DFG Research Training Group “Standards of Governance”! The group is studying a set of norms and practices that are often subsumed under the heading “good governance”. It emerged from an interdisciplinary research initiative of ten principal investigators (PIs) from the Technical University of Darmstadt and Goethe University Frankfurt. The academic disciplines covered are political science, sociology, philosophy and law. On our homepage you can find more information about the research program of the group and the PI team.

Closed research projects