School of Political Science and International Studies Dr Sebastian Kaempf

Dr Sebastian Kaempf

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Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies

BSc, MSc (Econ), Phd

560

General Purpose North 3 (#39A)

+61 7 3365 7530

+61 7 3365 1388

s.kaempf@uq.edu.au

Dr Sebastian Kaempf is Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland (Australia). He received his PhD (‘Wresting under Conditions of Asymmetry: Contemporary US Warfare and the Trade-off between Casualty-Aversion and Civilian Protection’) at the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University (UK) in 2007. From September 2004 to January 2005 he was a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University (US). He holds a BSc and MSc (Econ) in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Research Interests:

His general research interests include the relationship between ethics and the laws of war, critical security studies, American warfare, asymmetric conflicts, (the regionalisation of) peacekeeping, and the impact of new media technology on contemporary security.

In particular, Sebastian has three areas of research interests:
The first research project examines the relationship between ethics and the laws of war in the context of contemporary US warfare. More specifically, it investigates the ways in which wars waged under conditions of asymmetry have impacted on the relationship between the US norms of casualty-aversion and civilian protection. This historically-informed conceptual enquiry is explored in relation to questions of legitimacy and effectiveness of US interventions in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Since coming to UQ in September 2006, he has worked as principle co-investigator (with Professor Alex Bellamy and Associate Professor Paul Williams) on a historically-based comparative research project that examines the legitimacy of UN and non-UN peace operations.
In addition to the above areas of research, he has recently started exploring the historical and contemporary roles of media in international affairs, both as an important source of information, and increasingly, as a medium of war and diplomacy. In this newly emerging and multidisciplinary field, his research focus has been on the impact of new media technology on contemporary warfare, with particular reference to the US ‘War on Terror’. For some more details, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjT8SGErqco and http://soundcloud.com/dwgmf/war-2-0.

Teaching Interests:

POLS7504 Contemporary Peacekeeping

POLS1501 Introduction to Peace and Conflict Analysis

POLS3510 International Peacekeeping

Publications:

Kaempf, Sebastian. ‘Double Standards in US Warfare: Exploring the historical legacy of Civilian Protection and the complex nature of the Moral-Legal Nexus’, Review of International Studies, 35 (2009), pp. 651-674.

Kaempf, Sebastian. ‘Violence and Victory: Guerrilla Warfare, “Authentic Self-Affirmation” and the Overthrow of the Colonial State’, Third World Quarterly, 30/1 (2009), pp. 129-146.

Kaempf, Sebastian. ‘Russia: A part of the West or apart from the West?’, International Relations, forthcoming.

Kaempf, Sebastian. ‘Waging War in the New Media Age: Images as Strategic Weapons and the Ethics of Contemporary Warfare’, in Glen Creeber and Royston D Martin, (eds.), Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2009), pp. 130-138.