Welcome On Board! The GIGA’s New Doctoral Researchers

This year, Nikolas Karanikolas, Dima Abu Alkheir, Soumya Chaturvedi, Theodora Benesch, Fee Cohausz & Francisco Ahumada have been newly admitted to the GIGA’s Doctoral Programme. We are very happy to welcome you all to the GIGA team!

In their dissertation projects, the six new doctoral researchers will pursue exciting lines of inquiry.

Soumya Chaturvedi investigates how energy transition impacts India’s energy security considerations and the new dependencies and vulnerabilities that necessitate a reassessment of its foreign policy (“Geopolitical Implications of Energy Transition on India’s Foreign Policy”). 

Nikolas Karanikolas asks why Sub-Saharan African countries that underwent similar democratic reforms in the 1990s experienced divergent outcomes. Integrating theories of democratisation and social power, it developes a model showing how varying configurations of power among elites and opposition groups shape the success or failure of democratic transitions. (“Why Not Just Democratise? From Democratic Liberties to Violent Conflict: Revisiting Social Power in the Diverse Trajectories of Sub-Saharan Africa Post-1990”). 

Francisco Ahumada investigates supply chain sustainability by assessing human rights risks across industries and the mining sector's impacts on livelihoods and labor markets in the Global South.(“More Sustainable Global Supply Chains: Instruments, Opportunities and Risks”). 

Theodora  Benesch examines how bottom-up peacebuilding interventions influence not only participants but also broader community attitudes, social norms, and behaviors on the community or national level. (“Examining Links from the Micro- to the Macro-Level in Peacebuilding”). 

Dima Abu Alkheir investigates how Jordan’s monarchy performs custodianship of Jerusalem’s holy sites as a form of religious and political legitimacy, analyzing these practices within the framework of symbolic power and regional contestation (“Staging Religious Legitimacy through Custodianship: The Case of The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan”). 

Fee Cohausz’s doctoral research will be closely linked to the research project on the role of militaries in democratic backsliding that she started to work in, which explores how armed forces influence processes of democratic erosion, breakdown, and survival since the end of the Cold War. 

On 9 October, in a compact on-boarding workshop ‘Getting Started with your Dissertation’ with Maren Wagner, the Head of Doctoral Programme and Talent Management, they discussed how to navigate their PhD journeys and got to know each other.  

As part of the GIGA team, our new doctoral researchers will benefit from an international research environment. Based on their individual thematic orientations, they are member of one of the regional institutes and one of the research programmes. 

We wish our new team members a warm start to life at the GIGA and much success for their dissertation projects going forwards!