Richard Georgi
Om Richard Georgi
I am Assistant Professor (Biträdande Lektor) in International Relations at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg.
My research examines the intersections of human rights, political violence, activism, and peace, with a particular focus on Colombia and Latin America. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I explore how people render visible, navigate, contest, and resist violence in contexts marked by armed conflict, anti-rights backlash, transformations of (neo-)liberal global orders, and evolving rights regimes in the twenty-first century.
My work brings lived experiences into conversation with broader debates on the potentials and limits of law and rights; the complexities of activism between mobilization and populism amid the crisis of liberalism; and the nature of violence beyond conventional distinctions between conflict and peace. Situated at the intersection of political anthropology, critical International Relations, and human rights scholarship, my research draws on ethnographic and interpretive methodologies while engaging feminist, postcolonial, and decolonial approaches.
My research has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Security Dialogue, International Political Sociology, Political Geography, Review of International Studies, and Signs. Before joining the University of Gothenburg as Assistant Professor, I was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. I completed my PhD at the School of Global Studies. Supported by competitive national and international scholarships, my dissertation received an Honourable Mention for the 2023 European International Studies Association (EISA) Best Dissertation Prize.
I regularly contribute to international scholarly debates on political violence, human rights, poststructuralist methodologies, and anti-rights politics through invited lectures, workshops, conference collaborations, and editorial initiatives, including as Guest Co-Editor of the Frontiers in Political Science special issue Populism and Conflicts Across Institutions and Scales.
In 2021, I co-organised the international conference Imagining Peace Otherwise: Five Years of the Colombian Peace Accords Experienced from the Margins, which brought together scholars and practitioners from three continents.
Alongside my academic work, I have collaborated with human rights organisations in Germany, Mexico, and Kenya. These experiences continue to inform my interest in both the promise of human rights and the political struggles, abuse, and backlash that accompany them.
Current Research
My current research is organised around two internationally collaborative projects, both funded by the Swedish Research Council, in which I serve as Co-Principal Investigator.
Building Graveyard Peace? The Violent Legacies of Peacebuilding in Colombia investigates the unintended and conflict-generating consequences of peacebuilding following Colombia's 2016 peace agreement. Conducted in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Gothenburg and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, the project examines how efforts to build peace can simultaneously generate new forms of political contestation, institutional tension, and social division. More broadly, it contributes to debates on the embodied politics of peacebuilding, the institutional afterlives of peace processes, and the ambiguous relationship between peace and violence.
Prepping for Security in Sweden explores the growing phenomenon of preparedness in contemporary society. Working within an interdisciplinary team spanning political science, security studies, and anthropology, the project investigates how practices of anticipation, resilience, and crisis preparedness reshape understandings of security, citizenship, and political community. It examines who prepares for future crises, why they do so, and what these practices reveal about contemporary imaginaries of insecurity, social order, and societal resilience.
Past projects include research on the evolution of human rights regulation under contemporary supply-chain capitalism at the Max Planck Institute, with which I remain affiliated, and research on activism, conflict, and (de-)securitization in the context of the Zapatista uprising.
Book Project
Alongside these projects, I am completing a book manuscript based on long-term ethnographic research with human rights defenders in Colombia. The book examines how activists confront escalating violence, anti-rights mobilization, and transformations in the politics of human rights. Through an analysis of defender subjectivities and political practice, it offers a broader reflection on the place of human rights in an era increasingly shaped by populism, polarization, and backlash.
Teaching & Supervision
I teach across International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies, and Global Studies. My courses address topics including critical war and security studies, human rights, political violence, peacebuilding, global governance, migration, gender and postcolonial theory, qualitative research methods, and apocalyptic politics in popular culture.
I welcome enquiries from prospective students interested in supervision within my areas of expertise.