I’m a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), until September 2023 also a PhD fellow at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Political Science and the Danish Institute of International Studies (DIIS). I have a monthly column on global politics for the Norwegian daily Klassekampen (2017-2020 for Dagsavisen), and was between 2018 and 2024 Editor in Chief of the Scandinavian language International Relations journal Internasjonal Politikk. I’m also a board member of the Human Rights House Foundation. I have lived/studied/worked in Wales, Egypt, the US, Russia, Kazakhstan, England, Tajikistan and Denmark, but am now permanently based in Oslo, Norway.

I work on questions of global order and global governance, ideology and ideological contestation in world politics, the function of different liberalisms and dominant state ideals in international politics historically and at the present time, tensions between liberal-democratic values and security and warfare, the global ideas of illiberal, reactionary and antiliberal forces, non-Western and radical right perspectives on global politics, and the different meanings of sovereignty, morality, and (mis)recognition in global politics. I am particularly interested in social and political theory related to the international sphere, ideology, and idea(l)s of the state. I have also published on Norwegian, US, Western, Chinese and Russian diplomacy and international politics, particularly in relation to post-1945 global order, (contested) moral values, the UN Charter, and liberal (Western) exceptionalism and self-images.

My thesis, a monograph (2018-2022, defended after maternity leave September 2023), is titled Towards a Social Theory of International Ideology, Ideological Scripts, and Counter-Ideology. Rethinking ‘Liberal International Order’ and the Far Right’s critique. How does ideology work in relation to the state as a subject and the international as a distinct realm, and what specific forms of resistance does the dominance of an ideology create? Theoretically, it is about understanding how ideologies as realized ideal world views function in structuring the international - and how projects of resistance differ depending on what they negate, both in form, content, and consequences. Empirically, I historicize and disentangle specific forms of dominant liberal internationalisms after 1945 and 1989 and what I theorize more broadly as counter-ideological movements. What characterized the dominant liberal internationalism of the post-1945 era, how did that relate to the 1945 UN Charter and global order, and what changed after '1989? For the counter-ideological movements I look at the Global Right’s internationalism in Europe, Russia and the US, and their ideas of ‘illiberalism’ and world politics and how and where that aligns with the rhetoric of non-Western great powers. What do postliberal or reactionary movements entail for global order and liberal internationalism? Is it the post-1945, or the post-1989 order that they target?

Theoretically, I am especially interested in the limits to discursive change and performativity, and materialist philosophies of language and their intersections with conceptual history and ideology. In relation to political theory, the thesis deals with the concept of resistance and realist and radical politics - but from the right.

I was part of the Velux-funded research project ‘World of the Right’ at DIIS (led by Vibeke Schou Tjalve), and led a multiyear policy research project at NUPI for the Norwegian Ministry of Defence on rightwing anti-liberal international politics in Europe, Russia and the US (2018-2022). At NUPI I am now part of the project ‘A Conceptual History of International Relations’ (CHOIR) funded by the Norwegian Research Council, as well as ANGER, on anger in global politics, also funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

Please follow the links above to see academic publications, my column on international affairs [in Norwegian, some available through external translation in Danish and English], work in progress and more. I can be reached at mh@nupi.no.