Ben Christian is a postdoctoral researcher at
the Chair of International Institutions and Peace Processes. He studied
Political Science at the Universities of Mannheim and Exeter (B.A., with
distinction) and Frankfurt am Main (M.A., with distinction). During his
studies, he worked as an intern at various institutions (including the German
Bundestag, Amnesty International, and KfW Entwicklungsbank) and received a
scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. From 2019 to 2023, he was a doctoral
researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. In 2023, he received his
PhD from Goethe University Frankfurt for his dissertation on “criticism from
within” in international organizations. In the course of his PhD, he conducted
field research in New York, Rome, and Geneva. Since December 2022, he is a postdoctoral
researcher at the Chair of Prof. Lisbeth Zimmermann, where he works on conflict
and trust dynamics in international organizations. From September to December
2023, he is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of International Relations at
the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
His research focuses on the “inner workings” of
international organizations (IOs). He is interested in processes of
organizational learning and reform, the role of internal criticism, practices
of self-legitimation, and the agency and emotions of IO staff. Recently, he has
also started to explore the relationship between trust and conflict in
international politics.
