I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at Central European University in Vienna, Austria and a Visiting Faculty member in Bard College's Globalization and International Affairs program in New York City. I am also a non-resident fellow at the European Centre for North Korean Studies at the University of Vienna. I specialize in nuclear security, international institutions, and political psychology, which I research from historical and theoretical perspectives. My dissertation, defended in 2018, analyzes how great powers collude and compete for world order. Through archival research, I explored how great powers used what I call 'geopolitical bargains' to divide the world into exclusive zones of authority iduring the Concert and Cold War eras. These arrangements stabilized great power relations and allowed regional interventions, resulting in global stability at the expense of local violence.
I am actively involved in leading and contributing to several current research projects. A Stanton Foundation-funded project, Managing the Atomic Order, examines the role of international institutions, security architecture, and arms control efforts in the deterrence governance of the nuclear era, with an eye to renewal in Europe and East Asia. Another, aided by a 2022 EISA exploratory symposium, explores the role of subjective and psychological distance in international relations. I am also part of a broad research network investigating the geopolitical contestations of liberal internationalism and the emergence of populist reactionary world ordering. Before joining CEU, I was a 2018 postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta's China Institute, and a 2017/2018 research fellow at the Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict, and Justice at the Univerity of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. I hold a PhD in political science from the University of Toronto and hail from Nova Scotia, Canada.Updates
Gustav Meibauer and I have written on German nuclear weapons and Eurodeterrence at War on the Rocks.Read my thoughts on Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer at The Duck of Minerva.
See my review of Glenda Sluga's The Invention of International Order for E-International Relations.
Kirill Shamiev and I have written about the security of Russia's nuclear arsenal for Foreign Policy.
My piece on the use and abuse of historical analogies in Ukraine war commentary is available at Foreign Policy.
Simon Frankel Pratt and I have written on European solidarity for Ukraine's refugees and charges of double-standards at Foreign Policy.
ADDRESS
Deptartment of International Relations
Central European University
51 Quellenstrasse
1100 Vienna, Austria
EMAIL
larochec (at) ceu.edu
TWITTER
@CDLaRoche