Researcher
Minda Holm
Contactinfo and files
Summary
Dr. Minda Holm is a Senior Research Fellow at NUPI. Her research spans three main areas: the theory of international ideology and ideological resistance in world politics; global liberalisms and liberal internationalism, liberal exceptionalism and ideological and conceptual changes in global order, international norms, state ideals, sovereignty and international law; and the international ideology and networks of far-right and reactionary movements. She also works on diplomacy and foreign and security policy, particularly Norwegian, US and Russian. Her work is both theoretical and empirical, and situated in interdisciplinary dialogue with International Relations, global historical sociology, social theory, critical international law and political philosophy.
She has researched liberal internationalism and liberal exceptionalism, including in Norwegian foreign policy, and changing notions of sovereignty and state ideals in international law and politics. Since 2017, she has also researched far-right, national-conservative and reactionary movements and their global ideas. Between 2018 and 2023, she led a research project at NUPI for the Norwegian Ministry of Defence on the international ideology and networks of the ‘New Right’ in Europe, Russia and the US, and she was part of the research project World of the Right at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS).
She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen (2023). Her doctoral thesis, a monograph, is titled Towards a Social Theory of International Ideology, Ideological Scripts, and Counter-Ideology: Rethinking “Liberal International Order” and the Far Right’s Critique. It develops a theory of how ideologies structure the international through the state as a legal and political subject, and of the distinct forms of resistance this generates. She is currently developing it into a book proposal, and its core empirical arguments are summarized in the NUPI report A Postliberal Global Order? Challenge(r)s to the Liberal West (2025).
Holm has published in journals such as Review of International Studies, International Studies Review, Cooperation and Conflict, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy and New Perspectives, on topics including sovereignty, (mis)recognition, securitization theory, the transatlantic community of values and international diaspora politics.
For eight years, she wrote a monthly column on global politics in Dagsavisen and Klassekampen, and she was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Internasjonal Politikk between 2018 and 2024. Holm holds a double master’s degree in International Relations from LSE and George Washington University, where she was a Fulbright scholar.
See her personal website for more, including publications.
Expertise
Education
2018 – 2023 PhD, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. Submitted November 2022, defended after maternity leave September 2023.
2015 – 2016 MA George Washington University, USA (Fulbright scholar)
2013 – 2014 MSc London School of Economics and Political Science, England
2008 – 2013 BA (2, in parallel), Political Science and Russia studies, University of Oslo and American University in Cairo, Oslo/Egypt
Work Experience
2025– Board Member, Norwegian Polytechnic Society’s Geopolitics Network
2023– Senior Research Fellow, NUPI
2020–2025 Columnist (global politics), Klassekampen
2018–2024 Editor-in-Chief, Internasjonal Politikk – Scandinavian Journal of International Studies
2018– Board Member, Human Rights House Foundation
2018–2023 PhD Fellow/Researcher and Project Leader (Norwegian Ministry of Defence), NUPI
2018–2023 PhD Fellow, University of Copenhagen (supervisors Ole Wæver and Ole Jacob Sending; submitted November 2022, defended September 2023 following parental leave)
2018–2023 PhD Fellow, World of the Right research project, Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS; based in both Oslo and Copenhagen)
2018–2021 Board Member, European International Studies Association (EISA) Early Career Development Group
2017–2020 Columnist (global politics), Dagsavisen (“Internasjonalen”)
2017–2018 Research Fellow, NUPI
2015–2019 Board Member, Fulbright Alumni Association of Norway
2012–2017 Research Assistant, NUPI (full-time from January 2016)
2012 Intern, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Tajikistan
2010–2011 Trainee, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kazakhstan (covering Central Asia)
2009–2010 Journalist, Radio Nova
Aktivitet
Filter
Clear all filtersMutual Lack of Introspection and the ‘Russia Factor’ in the Liberal West
Minda Holm makes three claims in this article: one about the representation of Russia as an external enemy and the reflex to blame Russia for unwanted domestic developments; one about the liberal Western Self’s continuous violation of the principles it judges others by; and one about the seemingly deliberate lack of critical introspection amongst Russian and Western elites. The Western Self is largely viewed as liberal by default, irrespective of the extensive illiberal actions – seen in, for example, the post-9/11 era. Whereas politics is messy and full of contradictions, Western liberal morality is often presented as somehow standing monolithically above those contradictory actions: despite torture, a secret extraordinary rendition and detention program and wide-ranging breaches of international law, the US Self under Bush Jr. remained decidedly ‘good’. Whilst the Self’s identity as liberal persists despite violating those liberal principles, states such as Russia are stigmatized for the same types of violations. That this creates frustration with those defined as standing on the outside or, better, denied access to the true inside, should not come as a surprise. But, Russia’s continuous denialism and whataboutism, and the role of academics in this negative cycle, doesn’t bode well for the future of Russia-West relations.
Farlige forbindelser?
Den påståtte koblingen mellom franske høyrenasjonalister og Kreml er overdrevet. Men de felles interessene er der.
Taliban i Moskva og Doha
Forrige uke møttes en delegasjon fra Taliban og sentrale afghanske politikere til samtaler i Moskva. Møtet var det mest omfattende av sitt slag siden 2001, året da USA gikk til krig mot Taliban. Møtet kom like etter at Taliban har vært i banebrytende forhandlinger med USA i seks dager i Doha, Qatar. For første gang ble Taliban og USA enige om et utkast til et mulig rammeverk for fred.
A Conceptual History of International Relations (CHOIR)
The purpose of CHOIR is to investigate taken-for-granted concepts of international relations. ...
Forum: In the beginning there was no word (For It): Terms, concepts, and early sovereignty
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the concept sovereignty for international relations (IR). And yet, understanding the historical emergence of sovereignty in international relations has long been curtailed by the all-encompassing myth of the Peace of Westphalia. While criticism of this myth has opened space for further historical inquiry in recent years, it has also raised important questions of historical interpretation and methodology relevant to IR, as applying our current conceptual framework to distant historical cases is far from unproblematic. Central among these questions is the when, what, and how of sovereignty: from when can we use “sovereignty” to analyze international politics and for which polities? Can sovereignty be used when the actors themselves did not have recourse to the terminology? And what about polities that do not have recourse to the term at all? What are the theoretical implications of applying the concept of sovereignty to early polities? From different theoretical and methodological perspectives, the contributions in this forum shed light on these questions of sovereignty and how to treat the concept analytically when applied to a period or place when/where the term did not exist as such. In doing so, this forum makes the case for a sensitivity to the historical dimension of our arguments about sovereignty—and, by extension, international relations past and present—as this holds the key to the types of claims we can make about the polities of the world and their relations.
States before relations: On misrecognition and the bifurcated regime of sovereignty
The symbolic structure of the international system, organised around sovereignty, is sustained by an institutional infrastructure that shapes how states seek sovereign agency. We investigate how the modern legal category of the state is an institutional expression of the idea of the state as a liberal person, dependent on a one-off recognition in establishing the sovereign state. We then discuss how this institutional rule co-exists with the on-going frustrated search for recognition in terms of socio-political registers. While the first set of rules establishes a protective shield against others, regardless of behaviour, the second set of rules specify rules for behaviour of statehood, which produces a distinct form of misrecognition. States are, at one level, already recognised as sovereign and are granted rights akin to individuals in liberal thought, and yet they are continually misrecognised in their quest to actualise the sovereign agency they associate with statehood. We draw on examples from two contemporary phenomena - fragile states, and assertions of non-interference and sovereignty from the populist right and non-Western great powers, to discuss the misrecognition processes embedded in the bifurcated symbolic structure of sovereignty, and its implications for debates about hierarchy and sovereignty in world affairs.
Hatet mot George Soros
(Available in Norwegian only): Ingen enkeltperson er hatet så mye av både det nasjonalistiske og ekstreme høyre som ungarsk-amerikanske George Soros.
Familien i internasjonal politikk
(Available in Norwegian only). «Tradisjonelle familieverdier» blir stadig oftere brukt for å rettferdiggjøre systematisk stigmatisering av homofile i vidt forskjellige land verden over.
Visions of an Illiberal World Order? The National Right in Europe, Russia and the US
The rise of a national Right in both Europe and the US is disrupting the security agendas of Western foreign– and defense ministries. Long accustomed to directing the gaze and measures of Western security only outwards – towards Africa, the Middle East, China – these centers of policy formulation now find themselves forced to confront a more introspective line of questioning: Is the identity of ‘the liberal West’ and its agenda of a rule-based, institutionalized world order under threat from within? In this brief we unpack the visions of world order espoused by the new Western Right, its ideological overlap with conservative ideas in Putin’s Russia, as well as the built-in tensions and uncertainties of that emerging alliance. Our focus is on potential implications of these political developments for i) international institutionalism, and ii) interventionism. In short, we argue that anti-globalism must not be mistaken for anti-internationalism. The most basic political agenda of the national Right – from the Trumpian US to Putin’s Russia – is one of battling globalism and its liberal vision of a trans-national or cosmopolitan world order, by defending older Western concepts of sovereignty-centred, inter-national co-existence. In contrast to the extreme Right, the current European-US-Russian alliance of national Right politicians largely want to fight this battle from the inside and through, not outside, established institutions such as the UN and the EU.
Norge, USA og folkeretten
(Available in Norwegian only): Når det gjelder USA og folkeretten, er problemet ikke så mye Trump, som at USA konsekvent bryter de verdiene de selv forfekter, skriver Minda Holm i denne kronikken.