Mathias Großklaus was a PhD student at the Graduate School of North American Studies from 2013 to 2018. His work is concerned with the normative structure of the international system, the contestation of human rights and security discourses. He has conducted research on the United Nations’ promotion of gender norms in Nigeria, the European Union’s foreign and neighborhood policy in the Maghreb and the role of targeted killing in customary international law. He defended his PhD thesis “The Intertextuality of Global Norms: Discursive Strategies and Incremental Change” in July 2018. In 2017, he was a visiting scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge

Peer Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

2017: Friction, not Erosion. Assassination Norms at the Fault Line between Sovereignty and Liberal Values.Contemporary Security Policy, 38(2), 260-280. doi:10.1080/13523260.2017.1335135

2017: Appropriating Gender: The Ambivalent Effects of Nigeria’s CEDAW Implementation. In T. Bonacker, K. Zimmer, & J. von Heusinger (Eds.), Localization in Development Aid. How Global Institutions Enter Local Lifeworlds, 79-90, London: Routledge.

2016: Political Steering: How the EU Employs Power in its Neighbourhood Policy towards Morocco.Mediterranean Politics, 21(3), 343-363, with David Remmert. doi:10.1080/13629395.2016.1163783

2015: Appropriation and the Dualism of Human Rights: Understanding the Contradictory Impact of Gender Norms in Nigeria. Third World Quarterly, 36(6), 1253-1267. doi:10.1080/01436597.2015.1047206

Conference Papers and Working Papers (available on ResearchGate or Academia.edu)

2015: Assassination and the Transformation of International Normative Orders, Paper prepared for the 9th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, September 23rd-26th, Giardini Naxos, Italy.

2015: Targeted Killing and the Assassination Taboo between States: A Historical Perspective on Norm Dynamics in International Relations, Paper prepared for the 9th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, September 23rd-26th, Giardini Naxos, Italy.

2015: Targeted Killing and the Problem of ‘Norm Erosion’, Paper prepared for the 56th International Studies Association Annual Convention, February 18th-21st, New Orleans, LA.

2015: Steering Resistance: How the EU Employs Power in External Governance, Paper prepared for the 56th International Studies Association Annual Convention, February 18th-21st, New Orleans, LA.

2014: Norm Challengers and Norm Erosion: Towards a Comprehensive Understanding of International Normative Change, Paper prepared for the ISA Joint Conference on Human Rights 2014, 16th – 18th June 2014, Istanbul/Turkey.

2014: Talking Power: The EU’s Soft Steering Modes in the Neighbourhood Policy, Paper prepared for the 4th IES-VUB European Union in International Affairs Conference, 22th – 24th May 2014, Brussels/Belgium (with David Budde).

2013: Local Responses to International Human Rights Promotion: Appropriation as a Conceptual Frame, Paper prepared for the 1st European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS), 5th – 8th June 2013, Tartu/Estonia.

2013: Contestation, Appropriation, and Discursive Filters, Paper prepared for the 1st GHRN Graduate Conference on Human Rights, 22nd May 2013, Glasgow/UK.

2010: Patterns of Power. The EU‘s External Steering Techniques at Work – The Case of Democratization Policies in Morocco, KFG Working Paper Series, No. 22, December 2010, Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG) “The Transformative Power of Europe“, Freie Universität Berlin, with David Budde. (Link to article)