Ole Wæver

Professor

Department of Political Science
Øster Farimagsgade 5

Office: CSS 4, 1. sal, 4.1.53
Phone: +45 353-23431
Phone (Reception desk): +45 353-23366
E-mail: ow@ifs.ku.dk

Primary research areas

Ole Wæver is a Professor of International Relations in the Political Science Department of the University of Copenhagen and director of CAST, Centre for Advanced Security Theory.  His research interests include international relations and security theory, sociology of science, religion in international relations, and the role of national identity in foreign policy. Publications include Regions and Powers: The Struc­ture of International Security (with Barry Buzan), Cambridge University Press 2003; Security: A New Framework for Analysis (with Barry Buzan and Jaap de Wilde), Boulder: Lynne Rienner 1988, Chinese 2002, Czech 2006, 2^nd ed 2009); Global Scholarship in International Relations: Worlding Beyond the West (co-ed with Arlene B. Tickner) Routledge in print.

Primary fields of research:

Theories of International Relations (including disciplinary history and sociology of science)

Security theory (including development of the socalled Copenhagen School / theory of securitization)

Conceptual history for International Relations (especially the concepts of security, sovereignty and Europe as well as theory and methodology for the study hereof)

The relationship between European integration, identity and security

Regional security and especially the theory of 'regional security complexes' (and empirically mostly Europe, the Americas, Central Asia and other parts of the former Soviet Union and not least the total global picture of 'a world of regional security')

Nation and State concepts as key to foreign policies - discourse analysis as theory for this, empirically applied to Germany

Religion, secularism and security

The status and prospects for international law and different forms of world order

Mediation and conflict resolution including the potentials of (de)securitization theory for this

Missile defense, weaponization of space and deterrence theory

Danish security and defense policy

Identity, cooperation and transregionalism in the Nordic and Baltic areas

Theories about theories (kinds of theory, their relevance to IR)

Interdisciplinary comparison of methods for the characterisation of danger, risk, threat, catastrophe and insecurity

Climate change as security issue

Current research

Primary Research Projects in 2009:

- Security theory: build up of "Center for Advanced Security Theory" (financed under University of Copenhagen 'star programme' for 2008-2012). This includes the next bullets:

- Conceptual history of 'security'

- The theory of securitization; futher evolution and articles with 'reply to critics'

- Religion and security

- Climate Change as Security Issue

- Sociology of Science based analysis of the discipline of IR - Project with Christian Knudsen, Heine Andersen and Kristoffer Kropp (funded by Carlsberg Foundation) for comparative analysis of development in Danish social sciences (sociology, political science/IR, [managerial] economics).

- The global IR discipline: the possibilities for non-Western IR theory

- Understandings of 'theory' in different IR theories (1950s classical realism in the US, Kenneth Waltz's neorealism, the socalled English School and Securitization Theory)