About - Rebecca Adler-Nissen

My research focuses on international relations.

I am particularly interested in international political sociology, stigma, status, recognition, norms, diplomacy, sovereignty, European integration, social media and digital technologies.

I am engaged in the practice turn and, more broadly, in using insights and methods from sociology, anthropology and computational science to study world politics.

I am Deputy Director of the Copenhagen Centre for Social Data Science (SODAS) and PI of the ERC-project DIPLOFACE investigating the relationship between diplomacy, the public and digital technologies, taking the concept of ‘face-work’ to the international level. I also direct the research group Digital Disinformation exploring how disinformation spreads in the context of international conflicts and how it impacts public debate. Moreover, I am co-PI of the interdisciplinary research project HOPE: How Democracies Cope with Covid-19.

In 2019, I received The Danish Elite Research Prize. In 2016 I was awarded the silver medal by The Royal Danish Academy for Sciences and Letters and in 2015, I received the Nils Klim Prize and in 2014, the ‘Rising Star and Lecturer of the Year’ award of the Swedish Political Science Association’s IR section.

I am the author of Opting Out of the European Union: Diplomacy, Sovereignty and European Integration (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which develops a political sociology and practice theory of European integration, drawing on Bourdieu and Goffman, to explore the everyday diplomacy and stigmatisation of the UK and Denmark due their opt-outs from the EU. The book has received the 2015 Susan Strange Book Prize from the British International Studies Association and was the co-winner of the 2015 IPS Book Award, International Political Sociology Section, International Studies Association.

I am a former Head of Section in the Department of European Policy, at the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Previously, I was a project manager at the Confederation of Danish Industry and research analyst at the Danish Institute for International Studies.

I am member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), the board of the Danish Institute for International Studies’ and the Danish Intelligence Oversight Board

You can read more about my research in this interview with E-International Relations or in this portrait article (in Danish)