14:00 - 14:30 

PhD student: Mario GIAGNORIO, 
Supervisors: Anna CASAGLIA, co-Supervisor: Dr Marc Lanteigne, UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Title: Constructing EU Actorness in the Arctic: The Role of Domestic Dialogue in Shaping EU Capability
Abstract: The Arctic is not a white space for international politics. On the contrary, its vastness and the plurality of regional stakeholders, from Indigenous People to Arctic States, have produced several geopolitical visions and interests, which may be conflicting. This is true also for the European Union (EU), which has produced two policies for the region so far, in 2008 and 2016. However, its entrepreneurship has neither met the favour of other stakeholders, as in the dispute about the ban on seal products with Norway and Canada, nor advanced domestic integration, since the three Arctic Member States – Denmark, Finland and Sweden – have kept separate their regional competences from the EU’s. The upcoming update of the EU’s Arctic policy will need to strengthen the dialogue with Arctic stakeholders, especially the EU Members.
The purpose is to study how the EU’s political entrepreneurship, which aims at external recognition and internal coordination, is affected by differences in identities and geopolitical understandings among the Commission, the EU Parliament and the Arctic Member States. More specifically, the interest lies in how domestic pluralism influences EU capability, meaning the formulation of purposive actions and the identification of the necessary means to pursue them. The features of capability display the essential elements for an entity to act politically in a social environment, determining therefore its actorness. The analysis of policy instruments and élites interviews will provide information on identities, roles and expectations for the EU as an actor in Arctic governance.

PhD student: Shubham KARMAKAR    
Supervisors: Sofia GRAZIANI
Title: China’s soft power and public diplomacy in India: The role of the media
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to explore China’s public diplomacy in the context of Sino-Indian relations, with a focus on media diplomacy. Public diplomacy is understood as a government's process of communication with foreign publics to bring about understanding for its nation's ideas and ideals, its institutions and culture, and its national goals and policies. 
The study will examine China’s perception of public diplomacy through the use of discourse, both in official documents and media. The practice of public diplomacy is designed by the actor according to political, cultural and economic equations between the actor and the targeted country. As in the Asian Century, Sino-Indian relation is often perceived as a big powers competition, it has not been researched through the framework of public diplomacy. In order to fill this research gap, this study will contribute to the scholarship on China’s perspectives on Sino-Indian relations through the lens of Chinese public diplomacy practices towards India. 
The case study of Chinese public diplomacy will be inductively observed while analyzing three different data sources. The first source will be official documents, speeches, and visions from the Chinese leadership as a framework that is supposed to guide foreign policy actions. The second source will be empirical evidence of public diplomacy activities involving the media and practitioner’s interview. The third source will be the Chinese media discourse on Sino-Indian relations. Content and discourse analysis will be employed and accompanied by framework methods while observing qualitative and quantitative elements. 

PhD student: Silvia PEIROLO
Supervisor: Alessandra RUSSO, UNITN; co-Supervisor: Lotje de VRIES, Wageningen University
Title: Teach them how to fish: Problematizing EU security assistance to the gendarmerie in Mali and Niger
Abstract: Security assistance has and continues to be the focus of considerable investment by the EU in third countries. Most debates on European security assistance assume that a peaceful end-point can be reached if appropriate policies are implemented or if the right conditions are constructed. 
Framing away from normative evaluations of security assistance programs, the proposed research aims to examine how police norms are constituted and negotiated during EU capacity-building training and how they are ‘translated’ and ‘localized’ into local contexts. Building on the norm diffusion and state building literature, the research will analyze the dynamics of norm contestation and the processes of translation and localization of externally-driven police norms in non-EU countries. The proposed research is guided by an interdisciplinary international political sociology approach and examines the EU civilian training missions EUCAP Sahel in Niger and in Mali. The two countries have been a laboratory for the experimentation of internationally based policies that aim to support the strengthening of local policing and national sovereignty. 
The proposed research employs a qualitative methodology using a combination of desk research and site-intensive techniques of inquiry such as semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The proposed research aims to contribute to security studies by analyzing the fragmented character of European security assistance and offering new theoretical insights into the knowledge production process that forms the core of the EU security assistance in third countries. 

PhD student: Thomas ROMANO
Supervisors: Emanuele MASSETTI, UNITN; Rosita FORASTIERO, CNR
Title: Contested inclusion: political conflict over external boundaries in the EU
Abstract: The EU is being increasingly challenged in its international environment, in a way that puts in question the cosmopolitan values supposedly at the basis of the EU foreign policy. External boundaries, by delimiting the EU polity, affect not only the EU’s external relations, but also its internal legitimacy: openness and inclusion are important cosmopolitan principles, but many political actors advocate that the EU should defend itself from these challenges through greater boundary ‘closure’, e.g. in the fields of trade or migration. However, there is still little research on how external boundaries are internally contested in the EU, and how such contestation represents the diversity of views on the foundational values of the EU polity. 
The proposed research seeks to grasp the increasingly disputed nature of EU boundaries by focusing on how parties contest them. Taking the policies of migration and enlargement as examples of EU external boundary regulation, it employs a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods for text analysis of parliamentary debates in the European Parliament and in Italy, Germany, and Poland, to answer the following questions: how is inclusion framed and contested in Europe? Has there been a recent shift towards ‘closure’? The research would contribute to understand changing patterns of party positioning towards European integration and, more broadly, to grasp how, by contesting external boundaries, parties convey their views on European values and identity. 

16:00 - 16:30

PhD student: David Marcel SIP
Supervisors: Pejman ABDOLMOHAMMADI
Title: Brothers in the Axis of Resistance or Pawns? Iranian proxy warfare 1979-2019
Abstract: Since 1979 the Islamic Republic of Iran has developed relationships with non-state allies, often using them to engage in proxy warfare with its enemies. While the proxies themselves are well researched, there remains a debate about the factors behind proxy warfare. This research will contribute to this debate by analyzing what drives Iran in using these proxies to wage war on its enemies and under which and under which circumstances Iran develops lasting and deep relationships with its proxies.
Three main hypotheses will be tested: firstly that Iran is primarily driven by its identity, feeling compelled to help fellow Shias and the Palestinians in their struggles against Sunni oppressors, the West and Israel. Being driven by a responsibility to protect them, born out of a mix of Shia Islam and Khomeinist revolutionary ideology. Secondly, that Iran's main concerns are to defend and secure itself and its sphere of influence, making proxies Iran’s pawns. Lastly, an alternative explanation will be tested, that sees the competition between the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Foreign Ministry has caused the former to engage with proxies. By testing these three hypotheses in a broad set of case studies from the Middle East, Europe and Africa from 1979 until 2019, this proposal presents a comprehensive approach to analyzing the motives behind Iranian proxy warfare. But will also contribute to the growing literature on proxies in general by using a constructivist and a competitive approach, rarely used in this field.