Recent articles
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Haunted Independence: The Ghost of Ambazonia in Cameroon’s National Memory
(Volume 20, Issue 3)Abstract Each October 1st, Cameroon confronts a past it has never fully resolved. The date marks the 1961 entry of British Southern Cameroons into union with the Republic of Cameroun, yet it was never firmly institutionalised by the post-colonial state. Instead, October 1st remains an uneasy and largely avoided anniversary, displaced by the celebration of May 20th as ‘Unitary Day’. This suppressed temporal marker was fractured decisively during the 2017 crisis escalation, when separatists...
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The Internationalisation of Jina Mahsa Amini Anniversaries: Memory, Diaspora and Human Rights Politics (2023–2025)
(Volume 20, Issue 3)Abstract Anniversaries occupy a pivotal place in the politics of memory, functioning as contested arenas where states, societies and diasporas negotiate identity, legitimacy and justice. Focusing on the Mahsa Amini anniversaries (2023–2025) and the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement, this paper argues that commemorative practices have reconfigured domestic mnemonic contestation into a transnational human-rights narrative that recalibrates claims of state legitimacy in international arenas. The...
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Silenced Anniversaries, Stateless Memories: Rohingya Women‘s Oral Histories as Counter-Commemoration
(Volume 20, Issue 3)Abstract Anniversaries are powerful instruments of nation-building, political legitimacy and collective memory. Yet for stateless peoples like the Rohingya – systematically stripped of citizenship in Myanmar and forcibly displaced into refugee camps in Bangladesh – commemorative recognition remains structurally foreclosed. This article argues that the absence of formal recognition surrounding Rohingya suffering constitutes what I term an ‘invisible anniversary’: a politically produced silence that...
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The Politics of Water Security in the Nile Basin: From Hydrohegemony to Community of Hydrosecurity?
(Volume 20, Issue 3)Abstract The politics of Transboundary Water Security (TWS) reflect a complex interplay of power, discourse and competing national interests. Focusing on the Nile Basin and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), this paper examines how water security has become a contested political and security concept between upstream and downstream riparian states. Drawing on primary data generated through in-depth and semi-structured interviews with senior Ethiopian officials, GERD negotiators and...
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From Civilian Power to Emerging Security Provider? The European Union’s Evolving Role in Southeast Asia
(Volume 20, Issue 3)Abstract Over the past decade, the European Union has articulated increasingly explicit ambitions to act as a security provider in the Indo-Pacific. Southeast Asia constitutes a particularly revealing arena in which to assess this evolution, as the region sits at the geopolitical core of the Indo-Pacific while remaining anchored in ASEAN-centred security practices, non-alignment and sensitivity to external power projection. This article examines whether the EU’s expanding security engagement...
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Individual Threat Perception and Limits of Household Preparedness in Helsinki, Riga and German Cities
(Volume 20, Issue 3)Abstract European security policy increasingly relies on comprehensive defence and responsibilisation, expecting households to follow contingency protocols and sustain themselves for at least 72 hours. Using 2025 urban survey data from Helsinki (Finland), Riga (Latvia) and the German cities of Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, this article shows that urban populations are underprepared. Further, we examine whether threat salience, identifying a hazard as a personal concern, translates into...
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Signalling and Balancing in the Conflict in Ukraine from 2014 to 2016: Ukrainian Actors, Russia and the European Union
(Volume 20, Issue 3)Abstract This paper analyses the conflictual and cooperative signals of two domestic actors – the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian separatists – and two international actors – the European Union and the Russian Federation – during the first three years of the conflict in Ukraine. Previous studies largely treated the actions of domestic actors as a dependent variable and the actions of international actors as an independent variable. Our results demonstrate that the European Union and the...