Karl Gustafsson is associate professor (docent) and senior lecturer in International Relations (IR) at Stockholm University and senior research fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. Karl’s research interests include security, power and the role of collective memory in International Relations. He is also interested in issues related to research design and how material generated on the internet can be used for IR research purposes. Karl has acquired several research grants, including a four-year grant from the Swedish Research Council for a project on apologies and recognition in international politics and another four-year grant from the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation for a project on knowledge, memory and power on the Internet in East Asia. He has previously held a post-doc position at Lund University. He has been a visiting researcher at Tokyo University, Osaka University, Keio University (Tokyo), Academia Sinica in Taipei and the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies in Copenhagen. Karl’s peer-reviewed article ‘Memory Politics and Ontological Security in Sino-Japanese Relations’ won the Wang Gungwu Prize for best article published in Asian Studies Review in 2014 and his doctoral dissertation won the Stockholm University Association’s award for best dissertation (out of 66) in the Social Sciences in 2011. He has published peer-reviewed journal articles in journals such as International Relations, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Journal of International Relations and Development, Survival, European Political Science, Memory Studies, Review of International Studies, Cooperation and Conflict, China: An International Journal, Global Affairs, The Pacific Review, Asian Perspective and Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift.
Areas of expertise:
International Relations theory, collective memory, security, power, China, Japan
Recent publications:
International reconciliation on the Internet? Ontological security, attribution and the construction of war memory narratives in Wikipedia
Special issue: Narrative power in International Relations
Narrative power: How storytelling shapes East Asian international politics
Long live pacifism! Narrative power and Japan’s pacifist model
Chinese collective memory on the Internet: Remembering the Great Famine in online encyclopaedias
Temporal othering, de-securitisation and apologies: understanding Japanese
What is the point? Teaching graduate students how to construct political science research puzzles