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You are here: FRIAS Fellows and Alumni Fellows Dr. Benjamin Schütze

Dr. Benjamin Schütze

Arnold Bergstraesser Institute (ABI), Freiburg
Politics of the Middle East and North Africa

YAS Fellow
October 2021 - June 2022
Member of the Young Academy for Sustainability Research
October 2021 - September 2024


CV

Benjamin Schuetze is a Fellow with the Young Academy for Sustainability Research at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), and Senior Researcher and Emmy Noether Junior Research Group leader at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute (ABI). Previously, he has held posts as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Freiburg’s Department of Political Science and as Carlo Schmid Fellow at UNDP’s Crisis Prevention and Recovery Unit in Beirut. In 2016, he completed his PhD at SOAS, University of London, for which he conducted extensive field research in Jordan, Belgium and the USA. Ben has studied Political Science and Arabic Studies at the University of Leipzig, American University of Beirut and SOAS. His research examines transregional authoritarian practices and the politics of intervention via a focus on the political economy of renewable energy in the MENA, US and European attempts at ‘democracy promotion’ in Jordan, and US-Jordanian military collaboration. His publications have, among others, appeared in Globalizations, International Studies Quarterly, Cooperation and Conflict, and Security Dialogue. His book on ‘Promoting Democracy, Reinforcing Authoritarianism: US and European Policy in Jordan’ was published with Cambridge University Press in 2019, and has received positive reviews in Democratization and The Middle East Journal. He is currently leading a DFG-funded Emmy Noether Research Group on ‘Renewable Energies, Renewed Authoritarianisms? The Political Economy of Solar Energy in the MENA’ at the ABI, Freiburg.

Full CV available here.

Selected Publications

  • Schuetze, Benjamin (2024) ‘‘Seizing the Moment’: Arab-Israeli normalization, infrastructure as a means to bypass politics and the promotion of an Israeli-Jordanian transit trade route’, Geopolitics, https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2023.2284769.
  • Schuetze, Benjamin (2023) ‘Follow the grid, follow the violence: The project for a transregional Mediterranean electricity ring’, Middle East Critique, open access, https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2023.2242108.
  • Schuetze, B. & Hussein, H. (2023) ‘The geopolitical economy of an undermined energy transition: The case of Jordan’, Energy Policy, 180C, 113655, open access, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421523002409.
  • Gurol, J., Jenss, A., Wetterich, C., Rodríguez, F. & Schuetze, B. (2023) ‘Authoritarian Power and Contestation beyond the State’, Globalizations; introduction to special issue, open access, https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2022.2162290.
  • Jenss, A. & Schuetze, B. (2023) ‘Prefiguring Politics: Transregional Energy Infrastructures as a lens for the Study of Authoritarian Practices’, Globalizations, https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2023.2181545.
  • Jenss, A. & Schuetze, B. (2021) ‘Rethinking Authoritarian Power: The Logistics Space and Authoritarian Practices in and between Secondary Port Cities of the Global South’, International Studies Quarterly, 65(1), pp. 82-94, open-access, https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaa083.
  • Schuetze, Benjamin (2019) Promoting Democracy, Reinforcing Authoritarianism: US and European Policy in Jordan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108623681.
  • Schuetze, Benjamin (2017) ‘Simulating, marketing, and playing war: US-Jordanian military collaboration and the politics of commercial security’, Security Dialogue, 48(5), pp. 431-450, https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010617717620.

YAS-Projects

  • The geopolitical economy of an undermined energy transition: the case of Jordan, published in Energy Policy, 180, 113655 (with Hussam Hussein)
  • Sustainability Partnership Freiburg-Amman-Tunis, application for a DAAD Ta’ziz Science Cooperation 2023-2025, currently under review (with Hussam Hussein and other collaboration partners)
  • H2info: An Online Information Tool for the German Hydrogen Transition (with Severin Vierrath and Thilo Wiertz)
  • Discourses and materialities of Jordanian climate change governance (with Hussam Hussein)

Other projects & third-party funding

  • Emmy Noether Research Group ‘Renewable Energies, Renewed Authoritarianisms? The Political Economy of Solar Energy in the Middle East and North Africa’ (DFG, 2022-2028, 1.5 Mio. €, Principal Investigator (PI))
  • ‘Promises of Democratic Connection? The Politics of Transregional Energy Infrastructure Expansion’ (Thyssen Foundation, 2022-2025, 275.000 €, Alke Jenss as PI)
  • ‘Making Infrastructure Global? Design and Governance of Infrastructural Expansion in the Global South’ (EUCOR – The European Campus, 2020-2022, 35.000 €, with Alke Jenss, Kenny Cupers & Maren Larsen)