Ongoing research
Here is a brief summary of the ongoing individual and collaborative research projects I am currently involved in.
Exploring Dynamics of "Frozen Conflicts" Through Actor-based Interactions
Funded by the Estonian Research Council (2023-2027), the project explores the conditions that determine the following trajectories of frozen conflicts: a) remaining relatively stable in a “no war, no peace” status quo for long stretches of time; b) descending into renewed violent conflict; or c) coming close to conflict settlement. I am involved as a researcher in the project with the entire team of researchers at the De Facto States Research Unit. During its five-year life course, the project will bring together in Tartu the most prominent scholars in the subfields of frozen conflicts and de facto states.
Digging into the United Nations Archives
Using the R programming language I have webscraped over several dozen thousands of documents dating from 1945 to the present day which include discussions in any UN body regarding 30 de facto states that emerged after WWII. In collaboration with some of my students we are conducting content analysis around themes of self-determination, independence, statehood, war and peace surrounding de facto states. Initially, the project is taking an exploratory touch with a "goldmine" of previously unexplored documents on de facto states.
In collaboration with my former academic mentor, Jennifer Welsh at McGill University, we have singled out specific UN archival records with which we aim to interrogate previously unaccounted for anomalies in the admission of states into the UN. The project engages closely with notions of government and state (non)recognition in the context of Great Power decision making during the Cold War. The initial scanning of the records show that even if an entity was a universally recognized state, its admission into the "club of states" was not an easy business. Why? We aim to look at it and see what we get.
International "Digital Recognition" of States
In collaboration with Butrint Berisha at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political studies, we aim to chart how non-state actors are transforming the practice of state recognition in the digital landscape. With this, we aim to broaden the concept of state recognition and its impact, not only the emerging state, but also on individual and collective identities.
Future research
Here is a brief summary of the planned (can't wait... so to speak) research projects.
Encyclopedia of De Facto States
In collaboration with Yalın Yüksel at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political studies, we plan to start writing up the first encyclopedia of all the de facto states that emerged after WWII. As an empirical basis, the project uses my dataset on all the de facto states that I have collected during my Ph.D. project. Furthermore, the empirical analysis will also be based on the aforementioned UN archival records, as well as secondary literature on the histories of de facto states.
Data
My dataset on De Facto States (1945 - 2017) has been made publicly available on the De Facto State Research Unit (DFSRU) website. The time-series dataset includes over 200 indicators for 30 de facto states across the globe - amounting to 422 case-years for every single indicator - with no missing data.
The dataset is a result of data collection work over several years and some intermittent sleepless weeks and months while working on my Ph.D. project. Not great, but great outcome. The ETAG - Estonian Research Council has helped fund the interactive visualization of the dataset, which you can find on the DFSRU website. The interactive visualizations at the moment include only a glimpse of the entire dataset. With the team at the DFSRU we plan to update and expand the dataset both in terms of years it covers but also with new indicators.
Check it out 👀and play around 😎