My scholarship in the political science sub-field of International Relations (IR) addresses an important question in international politics: Why and how do states support or contest global justice institutions and norms? My research focuses mainly on two forms of transitional justice, meaning how states try to overcome legacies of past human rights violations: 1. International criminal justice and the work of international courts, and 2. Non-legal justice by former European imperial powers such as apologies or the return of colonial looted heritage. Recent and ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza highlight the relevance of international justice, and my research speaks to the challenges of accountability in these conflicts and beyond. In 2024, I received a College of Liberal Arts Achievement Award for Excellence in Scholarly/Creative Activity.

Legal Accountability and International Courts

One research track investigates legal avenues to justice and accountability. In State Behavior and the International Criminal Court: Between Resistance and Cooperation, (Routledge 2022), I investigate the political dynamics of cooperation between global, regional, and domestic actors by focusing on international criminal law, asking how and why states parties to the International Criminal Court (ICC) cooperate with it. The book analyzes patterns and causes of state cooperation with and resistance to the International Criminal Court (ICC). It focuses on the court’s African cases, including those against leading state officials, to dive into scholarly debates about compliance with international law and resistance to international courts. The book, which draws on content analysis and interview data collected in The Hague, Kenya, and South Africa, reveals the diversity of state behaviors ranging from full compliance and diplomatic support to partial compliance to resistance and exit. This redirects the widespread narrative about African resistance against the ICC to include evidence of continued support for the court. I argue that cooperation with the court is affected by a government’s perceived costs and benefits of executing an ICC request. In response to state resistance, the court has been careful not to alienate states further, thus highlighting that the ICC is both above and below the state: It has the power to charge individual suspects, including state officials, but it also relies on national governments to arrest them.

The book was featured in the “Favourite Readings 2022 – A Collection of First Academic Books” in the widely-read EJIL:Talk! Blog of the European Journal of International Law (Steiniger and Molbæk-Steensig, Dec. 31, 2022). It has been reviewed for the South African Journal of International Affairs (by Maxine Rubin) and The Journal of Human Rights Practice (by Genevieve Bates).

An article about South Africa’s engagement with the Court and why the country failed to arrest Sudanese President and ICC suspect-at-large Omar al-Bashir in June 2015 has been published in the International Journal of Transitional Justice. A second article on state rhetoric about the ICC has been published in the International Journal of Human Rights.

This research has been supported by a Small Research Grant from the American Political Science Association, the National Science Foundation, the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, the Maxwell African Scholars Union (Syracuse University), and the Roscoe Martin Fund for Research (Syracuse University). The support will and has allowed me to travel to The Hague, South Africa, and Kenya to conduct interviews with ICC officials, NGO, and state representatives.

Two other publications involve other international organizations and memory politics. In a co-authored article (with Audie Klotz, Patricia Goff, and Lindsay Burt), “Cultural Diversity and the Politics of Recognition in International Organizations,” we examine how international organizations have differently responded to and incorporated outside demands for greater cultural diversity.

Non-Legal Justice Forms: Apologies and Heritage Restitution for Colonial Atrocities

My second research agenda focuses on non-legal forms of transitional justice.  In 2020, I published “Reactive remembrance: The political struggle over apologies and reparations between Germany and Namibia for the Herero genocide,” in which I analyze Germany’s delayed response to the genocide of the Herero and Nama people in the former German colony of Southwest Africa. This paper investigates the politics of remembrance and guilt in Germany by analyzing German parliamentary records and speeches.

A 2022 article called “Normative Expectations and the Colonial Past: Apologies and Art Restitution to Former Colonies in France and Germany” analyzes the political debates in France and Germany surrounding apologies and art restitution as instances of belated “coming to terms” with their colonial past. I argue that both form part of a broader societal change surrounding a state’s history and its current identity.