Prof Olaf Corry

Profile

I am a Professor of Global Security Challenges and works on the international relations of the environment, specialising in the politics of climate change, particularly it’s security dimensions and the global governance of emerging technologies. My research seeks to advance the understanding of global risks, focusing on geoengineering and the intersection of security and environmental policy.

I came from a position as Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. I gained my Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen with a thesis theorising and studying the formation of a global polity through expert economic knowledge and its contestations before working in Danish politics and then as a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, and Lecturer of International Relations at The Open University, UK. 

Research interests

My research focuses on how international politics affect, and are affected by, the global environment. Currently, I specialise in the geopolitics of climate change and in particular the security implications of climate engineering technologies (‘geoengineering’). This concerns how the research, development and potential deployment of techniques to directly intervene in the global climate, either by limiting incoming sunlight or removing and storing huge quantities of atmospheric greenhouse gasses, co-produces international orders.

More generally I am developing and exploring theoretical perspectives and approaches that allow the global environmental crisis to be understood alongside the fragmentation of the world into an uneven international. For example the role of non-human nature in world affairs is explored in a recent article on how settler colonialism involves the expulsion (or elimination) of indigenous populations as well as (and through) wholesale transformation and attacks on natural systems associated with the indigenous. My previous research projects have focused on subjects such as climate protesters’ policy interests, green NGO engagements with climate technology, resilience thinking in and global environmental governance, green movements’ role in the end of the Cold War, and the role of risk-thinking in security theory.

I am also interested in the nature and politics of academic disciplines, and IR as a field of scholarship.

I have published widely in diverse journals such as Review of International Studies, Global Environmental Change, International Relations, Globalizations, Millennium, Environment and Planning E, Political Studies, Sociology, Global Studies Quarterley and Cooperation and Conflict. My book 'Constructing a Global Polity: Theory, Discourse and Governance' argues that objects of governance (e.g. ‘the climate’) structure the international system. 

Qualifications

• PhD International Relations (University of Copenhagen)
• M.Phil Politics and Sociology of Modern Society (University of Cambridge)
• Cand.Scient.Pol (Aarhus University)
• MA Political Science (Aarhus University)

Professional memberships

• British International Studies Association
• International Studies Association

Student education

I teach International Politics, Security Studies and International Relations and the Environment, but also help develop and am co-program leader of the MSc Climate Futures: Science, Society and Politics in the School of Earth and Environment. The program aims to overcome disciplinary boundaries in teaching and understanding the politics of climate change, drawing on multiple disciplinary prespectives..

Current postgraduate researchers

• Yeonsu Lee