Research and Teaching

Research:

Maike Messerschmidt is a research associate at the Chair of Comparative Studies of Political Culture. Prior to joining the Institute of Cultural Studies, University of the Bundeswehr Munich, she was a research assistant in the Department of International Relations/Peace and Conflict Studies at the Institute of Political Science, University of Tübingen (2016-2023) and in the DFG-funded research project "The Transformation of Violence-Centered Masculinities after Armed Conflict" (2019-2023). She holds a B.A. in Political Science and German Language and Literature, an M.A. in Peace Research and International Relations (University of Tübingen), and defended her PhD thesis in Political Science in 2022 (summa cum laude), likewise at the University of Tübingen.

Maike Messerschmidt’s research engages with post- and decolonial as well as practice- and gender-theoretical approaches in International Relations; critical feminist perspectives in peace and conflict studies, armed conflicts, and peacebuilding processes; militarisation and militarism in authoritarian regimes; and critical and postcolonial perspectives on security. Regionally, her work focuses on sub-Saharan Africa.

In a current research project, she examines the question how colonialism continues to shape policing in African capital cities today. In doing so, she analyses the institutional and legal framework, practices and routines, as well as the material and spatial dimensions of policing. Currently, she focuses on Nairobi, with the aim of expanding the geographical scope of the project in subsequent stages and addressing related questions, for example concerning postcolonial international police cooperation.

Maike Messerschmidt recently completed two research projects. In her doctoral project, she examined how security sector reform following intrastate armed conflicts interacts with gender relations and militarisation, and what effects this can have on political systems and societies. The project analyses these questions using the example of (internationally supported and funded) security sector reform in Uganda. Her second project investigated institutional and social constructions of masculinity in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Uganda, and asks how peacebuilding measures have contributed to their transformation.

Building on these research projects, Maike Messerschmidt is a member of the DFG-funded research network Kritische Männlichkeitenforschung Weiterdenken, which aims to elaborate the epistemological contributions of international masculinity studies to the social and cultural sciences in German-speaking contexts, to strengthen the field structurally, and to demonstrate its potential for understanding contemporary societal challenges. The network is multidisciplinary, but focuses on current theoretical and methodological questions as well as pressing social issues.

Teaching:

Maike Messerschmidt’s teaching takes place as part of the “Cultural Studies” and “Social Sciences and Public Affairs” degree programmes at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich. Her teaching covers a wide range of subjects and includes the methodological training of students as well as various thematic focuses. 

In the Bachelor's program “Cultural Studies”, she offers seminars on international relations and encounters under conditions of post-coloniality as well as in the field of peace and conflict studies, while teaching in the Master's program “Cultural Studies” focuses on transnational civil society and social movements. She was also involved in the organization and implementation of a study trip to Washington and New York, and another to Berlin, during which the role of African states and actors in international politics was examined.

She is, furthermore, involved in teaching in the field of peace and conflict studies, especially with a focus on peacebuilding, as well as in methodological training in the “Social Sciences and Public Affairs” Bachelor and Master programme.

At the University of Tübingen, she taught in the Bachelor's and Master's degree courses in Political Science. Here, too, she offered seminars on various areas of peace and conflict research. However, the majority of her teaching took place in the field of International Relations theories.