Researcher
Halvard Leira
Contactinfo and files
Summary
Halvard Leira is Research Professor and Research Director at NUPI.
Halvard Leira’s main areas of research is foreign policy and diplomacy, with a special emphasis on the Norwegian varieties. He also has a long-standing research interest in historical international relations, and international thought. Leira completed his PhD thesis in May 2011, titled «The Emergence of Foreign Policy: Knowledge, Discourse, History».
Expertise
Education
2011 PhD, Political Science, University of Oslo
2002 Cand. Polit., Political Science, Department of political Science, University of Oslo
Work Experience
2024 - Research Director, NUPI
2003- Research Fellow/Phd-candidate/Senior Research Fellow/Research Professor, NUPI
Aktivitet
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Clear all filtersFortsatt en amerikanisert samfunnsvitenskap? Internasjonale Relasjoner ved norske universiteter
Religion, prestige and windows of opportunity? (Qatari peace making and foreign policy engagement)
Norske utenrikspolitiske interesser - endringer i praksis, stillstand i debatt
'Our entire people are natural born friends of peace': the Norwegian foreign policy of peace
What makes a peace nation? In this article it is argued that the Norwegian foreign policy of peace is rooted in an historical self‐understanding of Norway and Norwegians as particularly peaceful, an identity which was first articulated around 1890. Norwegians hold a strong liberal/meliorist belief that the world can become a better place, and that Norway has an important role to play in this process. However, this general belief in peace and a Norwegian peaceful exceptionalism has been expressed in different ways over the last 120 years. Around 1900, the ideal was a passive state and an active people working for peace, while from around 1920 it was accepted that the state needed to take more active part. Where international peace activism was associated in particular with UN peacekeeping during the Cold War, and peace mediation during the 1990's, increasingly a broader panoply of ‘good’ issues have been tied to an ever expanding notion of peace. The last two decades have also seen increased Norwegian participation in offensive military actions, couched at least partly in terms of peace. That the Norwegian attachment to peace remains strong while still allowing for support to military action suggests both that the Norwegian self‐understanding as a peace nation is deeply rooted and that it allows for a self‐righteous understanding of ‘peace through war’.
International Diplomacy vol I-IV
Following on from where 2004's widely acclaimed three-volume SAGE collection, Diplomacy (ed. Jonsson & Langhorne) left off, this new four-volume major work takes a new look at a subject which has matured and developed significantly over the past decade. With the rise of India, China and Brazil as well as of the global south, diplomacy's history looks different. Significant shifts have prompted scholars in the field to reconsider the historical sequences that are relevant to an understanding of what diplomacy is today, and where it may be heading. Increased mediazation of global politics and diplomacy has prompted an exponential growth in literature on public diplomacy. This collection has been carefully structured so that each volume gives the reader an overview of the literature on a new area of development in the study of diplomacy: Volume One: Diplomatic institutions Volume Two: Diplomacy in a Multicultural World Volume Three: The Pluralisation of Diplomacy - Changing Actors, Developing Arenas and New Issues Volume Four: Public Diplomacy