Katja Lindskov Jacobsen
Biographic Data
| ID | 270754 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Katja Lindskov Jacobsen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Katja Lindskov |
| FAMILY NAME | Jacobsen |
| SIGNATURE | JACOBSEN K L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Copenhagen |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3993-6554 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 188 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
No poor person can afford a 200HP engine’: An Infrastructural Reading of Poverty-Piracy Link
Activating archives for the practice turn in International Relations
International practice theory (IPT) posits the primacy of empirics over theorisation, but what counts as empirical data? In this article, we discuss IPT scholars’ methodological preferences, specifically their prioritisation of ethnographic research over text-based analysis, the latter being understood as providing inferior access to practices. To contribute to a revision of IPT’s dismissive stance towards document analysis, we suggest bringing I…
Piracy and the broader ‘gun business’ in the Niger Delta
Piracy cannot be understood in isolation from other (criminal) engagements, but how can we explore such linkages and why is it relevant to understand their implications, both for piracy and counterpiracy? Appreciating that Niger Delta-based piracy has dropped to historically low levels, this article explores what pirates do when they do not sustain themselves by engaging in piracy. As such, the article offers novel empirical insights into underex…
Wagner Group Flows: A Two‐Fold Challenge to Liberal Intervention and Liberal Order
Focusing on Wagner Group (WG) forces, liberal interveners too readily dismiss the scope of WG’s Africa engagements, including economic and political “flows” that, in combination, challenge liberal interveners’ taken-for-granted access in several states on the African continent. Operationalising the notion of “flows,” we present an analysis that foregrounds both the scope of WG’s Africa engagements and the challenges. We portray WG as a broad ente…
Liberal intervention's renewed crisis: Responding to Russia's growing influence in Africa
Liberal intervention actors often understand Russian engagements in Africa through a great power vacuum logic. This logic sees Russian influence as resulting from Russia filling a vacuum where other (notably liberal) interveners downscale. This article unpacks that vacuum logic and explores its consequences and effects. On the one hand, the vacuum logic is central to representations of Russia as an entirely external 'other', which contribute to c…
Biometric data flows and unintended consequences of counterterrorism
Examining unintended consequences of the makings and processing of biometric data in counterterrorism and humanitarian contexts, this article introduces a two-fold framework through which it analyzes biometric data-makings and flows in Afghanistan and Somalia. It combines Tilley's notion of “living laboratory” and Larkin's notion of infrastructure into a framework that attends to the conditions under which biometric data is made and to subsequent…
Toward a Critique of Algorithmic Violence
Questions about how algorithms contribute to (in)security are under discussion across international political sociology. Building upon and adding to these debates, our collective discussion foregrounds questions about algorithmic violence. We argue that it is important to examine how algorithmic systems feed (into) specific forms of violence, and how they justify violent actions or redefine what forms of violence are deemed legitimate. Bringing t…
Taking the trouble: Science, Technology and Security Studies
A multitude of new research themes and objects, especially technological innovations and knowledge practices, have come to populate international relations and security politics. Many critical security scholars are engaging theoretical resources from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to make sense of things as diverse as fake news, climate change, financial surveillance, digital images and autonomous targeting systems. This Specia…
Disentangling the security traffic jam in the Sahel: Constitutive Effects of Contemporary Interventionism
Despite years of ongoing interventions by multiple external and regional actors, the security situation in west Africa's Sahel region is dramatically deteriorating. In this introduction to the special section of the July 2020 issue of International Affairs, we zoom in on four major external international intervention actors (France, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations) in the Sahel region's escalating 'security traffic ja…
Intervention, Materiality, and Contemporary Somali Counterpiracy
Taking seriously debates in IR about the significance of materiality and noticing the prominence of materiality in contemporary counterpiracy interventions, this article combines insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS) with insights from the poststructuralist intervention literature. Both literatures highlight the importance of “constitutive effects.” Poststructuralists do so with attention to the effects of intervention in constitutin…
Unintended Consequences of the Primacy of Politics in UN Peace Operations
The trend towards a more robust use of force in UN peacekeeping operations has received considerable attention from scholars pointing to the risk of unintended consequences. Since the report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, the primacy of politics is expected from all UN peace operations. The unintended consequences stemming from this primacy of politics has received considerably less attention, especially in the context o…
Biometric voter registration: A new modality of democracy assistance
It has been argued that we are witnessing a retreat from democracy promotion in liberal interventionism. Focusing on the roll-out of biometric voter registration (BVR) across Africa, as supported by institutions such as the United Nations Development Programme, this article suggests that rather than a retreat we are seeing the emergence of a new and seemingly lighter approach to liberal democracy promotion. Through an analysis of the use of BVR i…
Rethinking access: How Humanitarian Technology Governance Blurs Control and Care
Surprisingly little attention is paid to the role of digital technology and related forms of data production, storage, processing, and sharing in humanitarian governance. This paper uses Michael Barnett's () conceptualisation of humanitarian governance when arguing for a better accounting of technology in literature on humanitarian governance. Specifically, it proposes a two-fold alertness to governance of (a) the uses of new technology and (b) t…
Piracy studies coming of age: A Window on the Making of Maritime Intervention Actors
How, as a sub-set of maritime security, can piracy studies contribute with conceptual insights of relevance to the field of international security governance and international politics more broadly? To answer this question the article examines, with reference to critical intervention studies, how responses to Somali piracy have had constitutive effects, notably 'back onto' the intervening actors themselves. More specifically, three themes are exa…
UNHCR and the pursuit of international protection: Accountability through technology
Better management and new technological solutions are increasingly portrayed as the way to improve refugee protection and enhance the accountability of humanitarian actors. Taking concepts of legibility, quantification and co-production as the point of departure, this article explores how techno-bureaucratic practices shape conceptions of international refugee protection. We do this by examining the evolving roles of results-based management (RBM…
Conflict prevention as pragmatic response to a twofold crisis: Liberal interventionism and Burundi
Contemporary conflict prevention depends on information gathering and knowledge production about developments within the borders of a state, whose internal affairs have been deemed precarious by external actors. The international community, especially the United Nations (UN), calls this early warning and early action. However, for governments whose affairs are considered in need of monitoring, preventive endeavours—and the knowledge production th…
On Humanitarian Refugee Biometrics and New Forms of Intervention
This article traces the development from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) initially using biometrics in a few pilot projects (in the early-to-mid-2000s) to the emergence of a policy in which biometric registration is considered a ‘strategic decision’. It then engages key insights from current debates about ‘materiality’ and agentic capacity in combination with current debates about new forms of intervention.…
Do no harm: A taxonomy of the challenges of humanitarian experimentation
This article aims to acknowledge and articulate the notion of “humanitarian experimentation”. Whether through innovation or uncertain contexts, managing risk is a core component of the humanitarian initiative – but all risk is not created equal. There is a stark ethical and practical difference between managing risk and introducing it, which is mitigated in other fields through experimentation and regulation. This article identifies and historica…
Maritime security and capacity building in the Gulf of Guinea: On comprehensiveness, gaps, and security priorities
It is widely acknowledged that maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea is a highly complex phenomenon involving a variety of issues (legal deficiencies, inadequate military equipment, and challenges like corruption, political unrest and youth unemployment) as well as a multiplicity of external responders. To make sense of the impact that external actors have when they address this complex problem through various maritime capacity building endeavo…
Experimentation in humanitarian locations: UNHCR and biometric registration of Afghan refugees
Amid good intentions, such as providing humanitarian assistance to refugees, the use of biometric technology in humanitarian refugee management may entail various risks for the implicated refugee populations. Drawing on insights from science and technology studies, this article introduces a distinction between risks stemming from technology failure and risks stemming from successful uses of biometric technology. The article thus departs from the …
Making design safe for citizens: 1 A hidden history of humanitarian experimentation
Humanitarianism has long been thought of as the promotion of human welfare. In the context of peace and war, humanitarianism refers to the delivery of safety and protection to vulnerable populations. But humanitarianism has another history – one that cannot be understood apart from a history of experimentation, including experimental colonial and postcolonial endeavours in foreign territories and on foreign bodies to test new technologies and to …
Experimentation in humanitarian locations: UNHCR and biometric registration of Afghan refugees
Amid good intentions, such as providing humanitarian assistance to refugees, the use of biometric technology in humanitarian refugee management may entail various risks for the implicated refugee populations. Drawing on insights from science and technology studies, this article introduces a distinction between risks stemming from technology failure and risks stemming from successful uses of biometric technology. The article thus departs from the …
Do no harm: A taxonomy of the challenges of humanitarian experimentation
This article aims to acknowledge and articulate the notion of “humanitarian experimentation”. Whether through innovation or uncertain contexts, managing risk is a core component of the humanitarian initiative – but all risk is not created equal. There is a stark ethical and practical difference between managing risk and introducing it, which is mitigated in other fields through experimentation and regulation. This article identifies and historica…
Taking the trouble: Science, Technology and Security Studies
A multitude of new research themes and objects, especially technological innovations and knowledge practices, have come to populate international relations and security politics. Many critical security scholars are engaging theoretical resources from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to make sense of things as diverse as fake news, climate change, financial surveillance, digital images and autonomous targeting systems. This Specia…
On Humanitarian Refugee Biometrics and New Forms of Intervention
This article traces the development from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) initially using biometrics in a few pilot projects (in the early-to-mid-2000s) to the emergence of a policy in which biometric registration is considered a ‘strategic decision’. It then engages key insights from current debates about ‘materiality’ and agentic capacity in combination with current debates about new forms of intervention.…
Rethinking access: How Humanitarian Technology Governance Blurs Control and Care
Surprisingly little attention is paid to the role of digital technology and related forms of data production, storage, processing, and sharing in humanitarian governance. This paper uses Michael Barnett's () conceptualisation of humanitarian governance when arguing for a better accounting of technology in literature on humanitarian governance. Specifically, it proposes a two-fold alertness to governance of (a) the uses of new technology and (b) t…
Making design safe for citizens: 1 A hidden history of humanitarian experimentation
Humanitarianism has long been thought of as the promotion of human welfare. In the context of peace and war, humanitarianism refers to the delivery of safety and protection to vulnerable populations. But humanitarianism has another history – one that cannot be understood apart from a history of experimentation, including experimental colonial and postcolonial endeavours in foreign territories and on foreign bodies to test new technologies and to …
Toward a Critique of Algorithmic Violence
Questions about how algorithms contribute to (in)security are under discussion across international political sociology. Building upon and adding to these debates, our collective discussion foregrounds questions about algorithmic violence. We argue that it is important to examine how algorithmic systems feed (into) specific forms of violence, and how they justify violent actions or redefine what forms of violence are deemed legitimate. Bringing t…
Disentangling the security traffic jam in the Sahel: Constitutive Effects of Contemporary Interventionism
Despite years of ongoing interventions by multiple external and regional actors, the security situation in west Africa's Sahel region is dramatically deteriorating. In this introduction to the special section of the July 2020 issue of International Affairs, we zoom in on four major external international intervention actors (France, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations) in the Sahel region's escalating 'security traffic ja…
Biometric voter registration: A new modality of democracy assistance
It has been argued that we are witnessing a retreat from democracy promotion in liberal interventionism. Focusing on the roll-out of biometric voter registration (BVR) across Africa, as supported by institutions such as the United Nations Development Programme, this article suggests that rather than a retreat we are seeing the emergence of a new and seemingly lighter approach to liberal democracy promotion. Through an analysis of the use of BVR i…
UNHCR and the pursuit of international protection: Accountability through technology
Better management and new technological solutions are increasingly portrayed as the way to improve refugee protection and enhance the accountability of humanitarian actors. Taking concepts of legibility, quantification and co-production as the point of departure, this article explores how techno-bureaucratic practices shape conceptions of international refugee protection. We do this by examining the evolving roles of results-based management (RBM…
Maritime security and capacity building in the Gulf of Guinea: On comprehensiveness, gaps, and security priorities
It is widely acknowledged that maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea is a highly complex phenomenon involving a variety of issues (legal deficiencies, inadequate military equipment, and challenges like corruption, political unrest and youth unemployment) as well as a multiplicity of external responders. To make sense of the impact that external actors have when they address this complex problem through various maritime capacity building endeavo…
Liberal intervention's renewed crisis: Responding to Russia's growing influence in Africa
Liberal intervention actors often understand Russian engagements in Africa through a great power vacuum logic. This logic sees Russian influence as resulting from Russia filling a vacuum where other (notably liberal) interveners downscale. This article unpacks that vacuum logic and explores its consequences and effects. On the one hand, the vacuum logic is central to representations of Russia as an entirely external 'other', which contribute to c…
Biometric data flows and unintended consequences of counterterrorism
Examining unintended consequences of the makings and processing of biometric data in counterterrorism and humanitarian contexts, this article introduces a two-fold framework through which it analyzes biometric data-makings and flows in Afghanistan and Somalia. It combines Tilley's notion of “living laboratory” and Larkin's notion of infrastructure into a framework that attends to the conditions under which biometric data is made and to subsequent…
Piracy studies coming of age: A Window on the Making of Maritime Intervention Actors
How, as a sub-set of maritime security, can piracy studies contribute with conceptual insights of relevance to the field of international security governance and international politics more broadly? To answer this question the article examines, with reference to critical intervention studies, how responses to Somali piracy have had constitutive effects, notably 'back onto' the intervening actors themselves. More specifically, three themes are exa…
Piracy and the broader ‘gun business’ in the Niger Delta
Piracy cannot be understood in isolation from other (criminal) engagements, but how can we explore such linkages and why is it relevant to understand their implications, both for piracy and counterpiracy? Appreciating that Niger Delta-based piracy has dropped to historically low levels, this article explores what pirates do when they do not sustain themselves by engaging in piracy. As such, the article offers novel empirical insights into underex…
Wagner Group Flows: A Two‐Fold Challenge to Liberal Intervention and Liberal Order
Focusing on Wagner Group (WG) forces, liberal interveners too readily dismiss the scope of WG’s Africa engagements, including economic and political “flows” that, in combination, challenge liberal interveners’ taken-for-granted access in several states on the African continent. Operationalising the notion of “flows,” we present an analysis that foregrounds both the scope of WG’s Africa engagements and the challenges. We portray WG as a broad ente…
Intervention, Materiality, and Contemporary Somali Counterpiracy
Taking seriously debates in IR about the significance of materiality and noticing the prominence of materiality in contemporary counterpiracy interventions, this article combines insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS) with insights from the poststructuralist intervention literature. Both literatures highlight the importance of “constitutive effects.” Poststructuralists do so with attention to the effects of intervention in constitutin…
Unintended Consequences of the Primacy of Politics in UN Peace Operations
The trend towards a more robust use of force in UN peacekeeping operations has received considerable attention from scholars pointing to the risk of unintended consequences. Since the report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, the primacy of politics is expected from all UN peace operations. The unintended consequences stemming from this primacy of politics has received considerably less attention, especially in the context o…
Conflict prevention as pragmatic response to a twofold crisis: Liberal interventionism and Burundi
Contemporary conflict prevention depends on information gathering and knowledge production about developments within the borders of a state, whose internal affairs have been deemed precarious by external actors. The international community, especially the United Nations (UN), calls this early warning and early action. However, for governments whose affairs are considered in need of monitoring, preventive endeavours—and the knowledge production th…
Making design safe for citizens: 1 A hidden history of humanitarian experimentation
Humanitarianism has long been thought of as the promotion of human welfare. In the context of peace and war, humanitarianism refers to the delivery of safety and protection to vulnerable populations. But humanitarianism has another history – one that cannot be understood apart from a history of experimentation, including experimental colonial and postcolonial endeavours in foreign territories and on foreign bodies to test new technologies and to …
Experimentation in humanitarian locations: UNHCR and biometric registration of Afghan refugees
Amid good intentions, such as providing humanitarian assistance to refugees, the use of biometric technology in humanitarian refugee management may entail various risks for the implicated refugee populations. Drawing on insights from science and technology studies, this article introduces a distinction between risks stemming from technology failure and risks stemming from successful uses of biometric technology. The article thus departs from the …
On Humanitarian Refugee Biometrics and New Forms of Intervention
This article traces the development from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) initially using biometrics in a few pilot projects (in the early-to-mid-2000s) to the emergence of a policy in which biometric registration is considered a ‘strategic decision’. It then engages key insights from current debates about ‘materiality’ and agentic capacity in combination with current debates about new forms of intervention.…
Do no harm: A taxonomy of the challenges of humanitarian experimentation
This article aims to acknowledge and articulate the notion of “humanitarian experimentation”. Whether through innovation or uncertain contexts, managing risk is a core component of the humanitarian initiative – but all risk is not created equal. There is a stark ethical and practical difference between managing risk and introducing it, which is mitigated in other fields through experimentation and regulation. This article identifies and historica…
Maritime security and capacity building in the Gulf of Guinea: On comprehensiveness, gaps, and security priorities
It is widely acknowledged that maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea is a highly complex phenomenon involving a variety of issues (legal deficiencies, inadequate military equipment, and challenges like corruption, political unrest and youth unemployment) as well as a multiplicity of external responders. To make sense of the impact that external actors have when they address this complex problem through various maritime capacity building endeavo…
UNHCR and the pursuit of international protection: Accountability through technology
Better management and new technological solutions are increasingly portrayed as the way to improve refugee protection and enhance the accountability of humanitarian actors. Taking concepts of legibility, quantification and co-production as the point of departure, this article explores how techno-bureaucratic practices shape conceptions of international refugee protection. We do this by examining the evolving roles of results-based management (RBM…
Conflict prevention as pragmatic response to a twofold crisis: Liberal interventionism and Burundi
Contemporary conflict prevention depends on information gathering and knowledge production about developments within the borders of a state, whose internal affairs have been deemed precarious by external actors. The international community, especially the United Nations (UN), calls this early warning and early action. However, for governments whose affairs are considered in need of monitoring, preventive endeavours—and the knowledge production th…
Intervention, Materiality, and Contemporary Somali Counterpiracy
Taking seriously debates in IR about the significance of materiality and noticing the prominence of materiality in contemporary counterpiracy interventions, this article combines insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS) with insights from the poststructuralist intervention literature. Both literatures highlight the importance of “constitutive effects.” Poststructuralists do so with attention to the effects of intervention in constitutin…
Unintended Consequences of the Primacy of Politics in UN Peace Operations
The trend towards a more robust use of force in UN peacekeeping operations has received considerable attention from scholars pointing to the risk of unintended consequences. Since the report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, the primacy of politics is expected from all UN peace operations. The unintended consequences stemming from this primacy of politics has received considerably less attention, especially in the context o…
Biometric voter registration: A new modality of democracy assistance
It has been argued that we are witnessing a retreat from democracy promotion in liberal interventionism. Focusing on the roll-out of biometric voter registration (BVR) across Africa, as supported by institutions such as the United Nations Development Programme, this article suggests that rather than a retreat we are seeing the emergence of a new and seemingly lighter approach to liberal democracy promotion. Through an analysis of the use of BVR i…
Rethinking access: How Humanitarian Technology Governance Blurs Control and Care
Surprisingly little attention is paid to the role of digital technology and related forms of data production, storage, processing, and sharing in humanitarian governance. This paper uses Michael Barnett's () conceptualisation of humanitarian governance when arguing for a better accounting of technology in literature on humanitarian governance. Specifically, it proposes a two-fold alertness to governance of (a) the uses of new technology and (b) t…
Piracy studies coming of age: A Window on the Making of Maritime Intervention Actors
How, as a sub-set of maritime security, can piracy studies contribute with conceptual insights of relevance to the field of international security governance and international politics more broadly? To answer this question the article examines, with reference to critical intervention studies, how responses to Somali piracy have had constitutive effects, notably 'back onto' the intervening actors themselves. More specifically, three themes are exa…
Taking the trouble: Science, Technology and Security Studies
A multitude of new research themes and objects, especially technological innovations and knowledge practices, have come to populate international relations and security politics. Many critical security scholars are engaging theoretical resources from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to make sense of things as diverse as fake news, climate change, financial surveillance, digital images and autonomous targeting systems. This Specia…
Disentangling the security traffic jam in the Sahel: Constitutive Effects of Contemporary Interventionism
Despite years of ongoing interventions by multiple external and regional actors, the security situation in west Africa's Sahel region is dramatically deteriorating. In this introduction to the special section of the July 2020 issue of International Affairs, we zoom in on four major external international intervention actors (France, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations) in the Sahel region's escalating 'security traffic ja…
Biometric data flows and unintended consequences of counterterrorism
Examining unintended consequences of the makings and processing of biometric data in counterterrorism and humanitarian contexts, this article introduces a two-fold framework through which it analyzes biometric data-makings and flows in Afghanistan and Somalia. It combines Tilley's notion of “living laboratory” and Larkin's notion of infrastructure into a framework that attends to the conditions under which biometric data is made and to subsequent…
Toward a Critique of Algorithmic Violence
Questions about how algorithms contribute to (in)security are under discussion across international political sociology. Building upon and adding to these debates, our collective discussion foregrounds questions about algorithmic violence. We argue that it is important to examine how algorithmic systems feed (into) specific forms of violence, and how they justify violent actions or redefine what forms of violence are deemed legitimate. Bringing t…
Wagner Group Flows: A Two‐Fold Challenge to Liberal Intervention and Liberal Order
Focusing on Wagner Group (WG) forces, liberal interveners too readily dismiss the scope of WG’s Africa engagements, including economic and political “flows” that, in combination, challenge liberal interveners’ taken-for-granted access in several states on the African continent. Operationalising the notion of “flows,” we present an analysis that foregrounds both the scope of WG’s Africa engagements and the challenges. We portray WG as a broad ente…
Liberal intervention's renewed crisis: Responding to Russia's growing influence in Africa
Liberal intervention actors often understand Russian engagements in Africa through a great power vacuum logic. This logic sees Russian influence as resulting from Russia filling a vacuum where other (notably liberal) interveners downscale. This article unpacks that vacuum logic and explores its consequences and effects. On the one hand, the vacuum logic is central to representations of Russia as an entirely external 'other', which contribute to c…
Piracy and the broader ‘gun business’ in the Niger Delta
Piracy cannot be understood in isolation from other (criminal) engagements, but how can we explore such linkages and why is it relevant to understand their implications, both for piracy and counterpiracy? Appreciating that Niger Delta-based piracy has dropped to historically low levels, this article explores what pirates do when they do not sustain themselves by engaging in piracy. As such, the article offers novel empirical insights into underex…
No poor person can afford a 200HP engine’: An Infrastructural Reading of Poverty-Piracy Link
Activating archives for the practice turn in International Relations
International practice theory (IPT) posits the primacy of empirics over theorisation, but what counts as empirical data? In this article, we discuss IPT scholars’ methodological preferences, specifically their prioritisation of ethnographic research over text-based analysis, the latter being understood as providing inferior access to practices. To contribute to a revision of IPT’s dismissive stance towards document analysis, we suggest bringing I…
Political science (19 works) · Law (16 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (9 works) · Global Security and Public Health (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · International relations (5 works) · Peacebuilding and International Security (5 works) · Political economy (5 works)