Dr. Laura Pantzerhielm is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Mälardalen University (Sweden) and a Visiting Fellow with the Department of Methodology.

Laura received her doctorate in Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin (summa cum laude, 2020). She was a Doctoral Researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Centre and a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at Technische Universität Dresden.

Laura has held visiting positions at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, where she was a Sydney-WZB Merit Fellow. She holds a M.A. in Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin and Master in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action from Sciences Po Paris (both with distinction).

Research interests 

Laura’s research sits at the nexus of critical IR, International Political Sociology, IOs, human rights and global health. In her work, she explores the politics of knowledge and global power relations in international institutions. She has a long-standing interest in the work of Michel Foucault and related strands of social and political theory, such as political ontology, genealogy, discourse and materialist theorizing.

At the Department of Methodology, Laura will work on the Research Project ‘Explicating Archeology as a Mode of Inquiry in International Relations’, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The project aims to review the scarce methodological reception of Foucauldian archeology in IR and explore its creative potentials as a critical methodology for the study of global politics.

Selected publications

• Pantzerhielm, Laura. 2023. “On Multiple Objects and Ontic Fixes: Human Rights and the ‘Forgotten’ Politics of the United Nations Human Rights-Based Approach.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298221146303
• Pantzerhielm, Laura, Anna Holzscheiter and Thurid Bahr. 2022. “Governing effectively in a complex world? How metagovernance norms and changing repertoires of knowledge shape international organization discourses on institutional order in global health.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 35(4): 592–617. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2019.1678112
• Bahr, Thurid, Anna Holzscheiter and Laura Pantzerhielm. 2021. “Understanding Regime Complexes through a Practice Lens: Repertoires of Inter-Organisational Practices in Global Health.” Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, 27(1): 71-94. DOI:10.1163/19426720-02701005
• Pantzerhielm, Laura, Anna Holzscheiter and Thurid Bahr. 2020. “Power in Relations of International Organizations: The Productive Effects of ‘Good’ Governance Norms in Global Health.” Review of International Studies, 46(3): 395-414. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210520000145
• Pantzerhielm, Laura. 2017. “Contingent Materialities as Sedimented Articulations: Anti-Essentialist Discourse Analysis and Materialism at the Nexus of IR and Political Theory”. In: Veit Schwab and Johannes Beetz eds. Material Discourse – Materialist Analysis: Materialist Approaches in Discourse Studies. Lexington Books. ISBN: 978-1-4985-5815-0
• Pantzerhielm, Laura. 2016. Science and Democracy: Contingent regularities in scholarly discourse on European governance. Forschungsberichte internationale Politik, Münster: LIT Verlag. ISBN: 978-3-643-90724-0.