Welcome Onboard! The GIGA’s New Doctoral Researchers

This year, Houssein Al Malla, Cornelius Haritz, Alina Ripplinger, and Hamid Talebian 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 four new doctoral researchers will pursue exciting lines of inquiry in the fields of International Relations, Conflict Studies, and Democracy Studies:

• Houssein Al Malla’s work is dedicated to investigating how political psychology affects the impact of international sanctions (“Personality and Foreign Policy: The Role of Political Psychology in Accounting for the Outcomes of International Sanctions”).

• Cornelius Haritz examines in a multidimensional study how conflict cycles can be broken (“What Works in Breaking Conflict Cycles? A Cross-Regional and Multidimensional Study of Conflict Transformation”).

• Alina Ripplinger explores human rights conventions’ controls in Nicaragua (“Countering the Authoritarian Turn: Diagonal Controls under Human Rights Law as a Last Resort in Nicaragua”).

• The aim in Hamid Talebian’s scholarship is to explain the impact of Iran’s educational and sectarian-revolutionary involvement in Sub-Saharan Africa (“Iran’s Educational and Sectarian-Revolutionary Parastatal Actors in Sub-Saharan Africa: Explaining the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Articulation of Its (Soft) Power”).

As part of the GIGA team, our four new doctoral students will benefit from an international research environment and the Institute’s global research approach. During the Welcome Days held from 4–10 October 2022, they will have their first opportunity to get to know the GIGA’s regional institutes, research programmes, and various departments.

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