- How do Crisis Management and Crisis Learning explain complex governance regimes?
- How do law and human rights-based approaches contribute to sustainable development amid strained liberal constitutional orders, and how can legal mobilization address systemic inequalities and foster legal learning?
- How can the linkages between urban and rural areas, resource development areas and border identities be understood as a governance crisis?
Keywords: International relations and political economy in development studies; Human rights, legal mobilization and systemic justice; Crisis governance, complexity and causality
We live in a world characterized by the omnipresence and recurrence of complex crises. These are not fleeting accidental events or disasters, but multifaceted, multi-layered and overlapping systemic processes.
Engaging with the praxis of solving, intervening with and mitigating the harmful effects of crises
Crisis Management (CM) is a critical field of study that attempts to not merely understand, but to engage with the praxis of solving, intervening with and even mitigating the harmful effects of these ever-present crises, particularly in relation to global development challenges. Moreover, this field incorporates Crisis Learning (CL), both as a pedagogical / learning approach for responding to crises and for critical, reflexive engagement that is of high social relevance. Moreover, what happens when CM as a field itself is in crisis compels us to study the Crisis of Crisis Management (CCM).
The Crisis, Politics and Law Academic Team’s awareness that complex and contradictory power relations characterize policy attempts to deal with crises at the level of events or complex systems has opened a pathway for three interconnected research projects, all of which are embedded in different areas of transition.
Governance Regimes and Systems in Transition
In a world delineated by the retreat of (neo) liberal discourses and practices and the ascendency of authoritarian ones, this research project led by Dr Karim Knio seeks to trace how various attempts at Crisis Management/Crisis of Crisis Management via Crisis Learning intersect with complex governance regimes through adaptive, resilient, agile and transformative formal and informal institutions, also in relation to global development challenges.
Justice in Transition
Liberal constitutional orders have both failed to deliver and to redress systemic problems; this is the focus of this research project led by Professor Karin Arts and Dr Jeff Handmaker. The project investigates issues such as the inter-generational consequences of climate change or the redress of historical and contemporary human rights atrocities.
A Crisis Management approach to analysing these systemic problems, and the different uses of law applied to resolve them raise critically reflexive questions around the intersection of law and politics and potential for CL (legal learning).
Urbanity and Transition
This research project led by Professor Shuaib Lwasa recognises that urbanity is not exclusive to distinct urban areas, but that the global city occurs along a continuum between linked spaces and through indirect and distant relations.
With multiple interests, values and materialities, the politics and governance challenges become concentrated in contested and hybrid urban spaces. This project uses Crisis Management and Crisis Learning to study the frontiers between urban and rural areas, resource development areas and border identities.
Initiatives
Initiatives that the Crisis, Politics and Law Team hosts, such as the Kids Rights Index and the Legal Mobilization Platform address topics and problems in this sphere, both through research and teaching and through practice-based partnerships.
Crisis, Politics and Law research projects
Crisis, Politics and Law researchers
Dr Jeff HandmakerAssociate Professor of Legal Sociology
Human rights in South Africa and Palestine; Legal mobilization and systemic justice; Critical constitutionalism and legal learning
Dr Juan David ParraTeaching Fellow in Social Ontology and International Political Economy
Governance; Comparative education; Policy implementation
Dr Karim KnioAssociate Professor in Associate Professor in International Political Economy and Director of the CERES Research School for International Development
Public policy and governance; Political economy and international relations; Crisis in the Middle East
Professor Karin ArtsProfessor of International Law and Development
Public international law; Sustainable development law; Human and children’s rights
Professor Shuaib LwasaProfessor of Urban Resilience and Global Development
Urban systems; Transition; Resilience and governance
Dr Sunil TankhaAssistant Professor of States, Societies and World Development
Public policy and administration; Economic and political development
Professor Wil HoutProfessor of Governance and International Political Economy
International relations in the Global South; International and regional cooperation; Politics of Suriname
Postdocs and visiting scholars
- Ms Daniela Raad Sierra
Research Fellow
- Dr Hadeel Abu Hussein
Research Fellow
Dr Karolina KocembaMarie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Human rights; Socio-legal studies; Legal mobilization; Reproductive rights- Ms Melissa O’Donnell
Research Fellow
Dr Thandiwe MatthewsResearch Fellow and Lecturer in the School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
- Mr Wesam Ahmad
Research Fellow
Dr Yazid ZahdaAssociate scholar
Crisis, Politics and Law PhD researchers
- Ahmed El Assal
- Alemayehu Begna Hordofa
- Afroza Bulbul
- Amanda da Silva Martins
- Andrew Dryhurst
- Claudia Fernanda Rodriguez Orrego
- Claudia Gonzalez Marrero
- Charmika Samaradiwakera-Wijesundara
- Cyrus Afshar Fernandes Abdollahyan
- Ekaterina Evdokimova
- Guido Maschhaupt
- Ilkay Nadir
- Margaux Schulz
- Mona Jormand
- Rima Rassi
- Yuyun Wahyuningrum
- Zheng 'Vance' Zhang
Get in touch!
Dr Karim Knio
Academic Team leader
- Email address
- knio@iss.nl