Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries Researching the United Nations and Other International Organizations

Opening speech by Michael Møller (Director General, UNOG) and by Yves Flückiger (Rector of the University of Geneva).

Speakers: Laëtitia Atlani-Duault (IRD, FMSH, Columbia University), Davide Rodogno (Graduate Institute), Nico Krisch (Graduate Institute) and Birgit Müller (EHESS-CNRS).

Chair: Sandra Lavenex (UNIGE).

This roundtable is a unique opportunity to bring together well-known scholars from different disciplines (history, political science, law and anthropology) specialized in the research on international organizations. IOs have been examined by scholars from a broad range of disciplines, relying on a large variety of methods. These methods however are also constantly evolving, and researchers from different disciplines often share similar methodologies. The objective is to discuss the link between disciplines and methods, but also to advocate for greater dialogue among disciplines tackling IOs. We aim to address questions such as the link between the methodology and the researcher’s disciplinary anchor, the extent to which methods enable researchers to go beyond disciplinary boundaries, and the added value and challenges related to inter-disciplinarity research from a methodological standpoint.

This first roundtable is conceived as a special event that gathers confirmed researchers to feed the debate around methods of investigation in researching the United Nations and other IOs.