Kristin Anabel Eggeling works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen and a Visiting Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. She also serves as Co-chair of the Diplomatic Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA). Kristin’s teaching and research focus on international diplomacy, digitalization, global tech policy, everyday politics, and ethnographic methods in International Relations. Her scholarly work has been widely recognized, earning her the Anthony Deos Early Career Award in 2023 for emerging scholars in Diplomatic Studies, awarded by the ISA. Her research has been published in leading social science journals, including the Review of International Studies, European Journal of International Relations, Global Studies Quarterly, International Political Sociology, Millennium, Big Data & Society, Geopolitics, and Qualitative Research.
Kristin holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of St Andrews (2019) and has pursued studies in liberal arts, philosophy, politics, international relations, literature, and writing at the Universities of Maastricht, the Australian National University, Oxford, and St Andrews. In addition to her academic roles in British and Danish institutions, Kristin has professional experience working with the German Chamber of Commerce in Doha, Qatar, and the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. Kristin’s academic publications can be found on her Google Scholar profile.
What (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking or encouraged you to pursue your area of research?
The ideas for my academic research always begin in the middle of things, in media res. I will give you two examples. I wrote a PhD thesis about the politics of seemingly banal, apolitical practices of nation-branding through which countries present themselves on the world stage. The idea for this research project developed when I was living in Doha, Qatar, after graduating from my master’s in 2013. I wasn’t working in academia then – indeed, my first professional task was to find a supplier of industrial pipe insulation tapes for the expanding Qatari energy sector. Yet, while I was living in Doha and working on this or that project, I often found myself gaping at the speed of the city’s development and the endless resources the Qatari government seemed to pour into the development of their national ‘brand’ through architecture, sporting events, and cultural and educational institutions. I got the chance to go back to university and back to writing the following year, and so I took it.
A similar dynamic led to the formulation of the research project I am currently working on with colleagues at the University of Copenhagen on Europe’s agenda to attain ‘digital sovereignty.’ I first encountered Europe’s dependency on other parts of the world for its technological development as a political issue by holding my ear close to the ground in Brussels and listening to the day-to-day concerns of policymakers and diplomats. This happened during fieldwork back in 2019 and 2020, before the spread of Covid-19. Already then, people in Brussels were using a term, ‘digital sovereignty’, that sounded strange to me, and I started to........