Gerrit Kurtz
Free University Berlin
September – November 2012
Gerrit Kurtz is a recent graduate of the joint Master’s Programme in International Relations offered by the Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt Universität Berlin and the University of Potsdam. His main research areas are the United Nations, armed non-state actors, South Asia and discourse theory.
In New Delhi, his work will focus on India’s role in the norm diffusion process of a responsibility to protect civilians from mass atrocities (R2P). He will develop and apply an original theoretical framework on the cultural, historical and intellectual sources of India’s foreign security policy in the United Nations. In this regard, domestic experiences and perceptions of countering non-state violence at home (e.g. North Eastern insurgencies) and (not) intervening in regional conflicts (e.g. Sri Lanka 1987-90 and 2007-09) as well as traditional sources for example on the role of the state and war ethics are assumed to frame India’s foreign policy thinking. The aim is to develop a rough model of discursive sources of identity construction in foreign security policy and to further the understanding of the global norm diffusion process by focusing on one key actor’s policy-making and ways of rhetorical and practical contestation. These results should serve the development of a potential PhD proposal.