Madita is a doctoral researcher at the War Studies Department at King’s College, London. Her research is situated in the fields of feminist and postcolonial International Relations, global political economies, colonial histories and Feminist Security Studies.

Her PhD project looks at legacies and (dis)continuities of empire in foreign policy. It asks how power structures of capital, race, and gender reproduce and sustain these (dis)continuities in everyday postcolonial spaces, and how these structures may contribute to the erasure of colonial and imperial histories.

Before coming to King’s College, Madita gained profound experience in research, teaching and feminist civil society advocacy work. She was a researcher and lecturer at the University of Vienna, where she focused on EU border security and migration politics, the UN Security Council’s Agenda on Women, Peace and Security, as well as gender-based violence. She also spent some time working in the German NGO-sector as a policy advisor on international gender equality in the field of feminist foreign policy.

She is an executive board member and co-women’s representative at the German Association for Peace and Conflict Studies (AFK e.V.) and an active member of the German section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

She previously served as a member of the Early Career Research Development Team of the European International Studies Association.

She is part of the Feminisms and Wars Network (funded by NordForsk), coordinated by members of the Swedish Defence University.

Madita holds an MSc in International Relations Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA in European Studies from Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg. 

Research Interests: 

• Feminist and postcolonial theories in International Relations

• Feminist Security Studies

• Capital, race, and gender in global politics

• Everyday global political economies

• Colonial histories

• Feminist foreign policy

• Foreign policy

• EU border security and migration politics

• Gender-based violence 

Thesis Project:

Ghosts of one’s imperial past: everyday legacies of empire in German foreign policy in India

This project researches the legacies as well as (dis) continuities of empire on which foreign policy of former imperial powers operates in postcolonial spaces. It does so by looking at how capital, race, and gender as organizing principles of the international sustain such (dis)continuities in everyday foreign policy, and how these operate on and contribute to the erasure of histories of empire and colonialism. The project brings together a feminist understandings of the everyday as reciprocal of the global with postcolonial analyses that situate the emergence of the international in histories of empire, racism and colonialism. Empirically, it traces legacies, their (dis)continuities and ruptures of empire in and around the German embassy and its school in New Delhi, India, by analyzing respective contemporary gendered and racialized implications in the everyday. In sum, the project asks how historically grown forms of empire continue to shape the Indian subcontinent, and thereby contributes to the debates on the underestimated historical and contemporary global impact of German imperialism. 

Supervisors:

• Dr Amanda Chisholm

• Dr Maeve Ryan 

Research Articles:

• Sachseder, J.; Stachowitsch, S.; Standke-Erdmann, M. (2024). Entangled Vulnerabilities: Gendered and Racialised Bodies and Borders in EU External Border Security, Geopolitics, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14650045.2023.2291060
• Standke-Erdmann, M., & Viehoff, A. (2020). A world transformed by climate justice. New Perspectives, 28(3), 347 - 365. https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X20935235
• Standke-Erdmann, M. & Scheyer, V. (2020) Exposing Flaws in the Logic(s) of Nuclear Deterrence as an International Security Strategy – A Feminist Postcolonial Perspective. Ethik und Militär, 2020/1, http://www.ethikundmilitaer.de/en/full-issues/20201-nuclear-deterrence/standke-erdmann-scheyer-exposing-flaws-in-the-logics-of-nuclear-deterrence-as-an-international-security-strategy/

Book chapters: 

• Standke-Erdmann, M.; Pieper, M.; Rosenberger, S. (2022). Countering ‘Their’ Violence: Framing Gendered Violence Against Women Migrants in Austria. In: Freedman, J., Sahraoui, N., Tastsoglou, E. (eds) Gender-Based Violence in Migration. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. , 59 - 83, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07929-0_3

Policy papers and blog entries

• Gyan-Addo, L.; Standke-Erdmann, M.; Stachowitsch, S. (2021): The Women, Peace and Security Agenda in EU Border Management, Working Paper 110/June 2021, Österreichisches Institut für Internationale Politik, https://www.oiip.ac.at/publikation/the-women-peace-and-security-agenda-in-eu-border-management
• Bernading, N.; Menninger, J.; Provan, A.; Scheyer, V.; Standke-Erdmann, M. (2021): How Militarized is Germany’s Foreign Policy? Center for Feminist Foreign Policy and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/2021-09/CFFP-HeinrichBoll-EN-Final2.pdf
• Standke-Erdmann, M. (2021): An Intersectional Perspective on the New Pact on Migration and Asylum. Policy Analysis. Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Brussels, https://eu.boell.org/en/intersectionality-refugee-women

• Standke-Erdmann, M. (2020): Germany Should Acknowledge and Counter Violence against Refugee Women at the EU’s Borders. Peace Lab Blog (GPPi) on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda: Impulse für den dritten Nationalen Aktionsplan der Bundesregierung, https://peacelab.blog/2020/07/germany-should-acknowledge-and-counter-violence-against-refugee-women-at-the-eus-borders

Reviews

• Standke-Erdmann, M. (2022) Review – Feminist Solutions for Ending War; Edited by Megan MacKenzie and Nicole Wegner Pluto Press, 2021, https://www.e-ir.info/pdf/98778 . 

Madita Standke-Erdmann PURE Research Profile here.