Karen Lund Petersen

CAST Associate Professor

klp@cast.ku.dk
+45 35 32 33 67

My research is primarily directed towards understanding how policies on counterterrorism challenge the modern concepts of national and international security. I am especially interested in how private companies have become an integral and important political partners in the security policies of western states, and how this development rewrites the modern liberal distinction between public and private.

Main Research Topics

Cultures of Corporate Security

The research project ‘Cultures of Corporate Security' asks what security measures large Danish, French, UK and US companies take to counter terrorism and what understandings of national security and public safety are implied in these corporate security decisions. The central aim is to show that the relation between corporate risk and public safety is understood differently in different countries and that this affects the feasibility of counter terrorism policies.

The project is a three years post.doc project undertaken by Karen Lund Petersen and financed by the Danish Research Council and CAST

Counterterrorism and the neo-republican patriot

The research project "Counterterrorism and the neo-republican patriot" explores the ways in which countering terror has transformed the state/society divide, redefining notions of power, citizenship, and duty which sustain it. It asks how contemporary security governance manages to mobilize private citizenry; What rhetorical strategies, it turns to in the attempt to ‘responsibilize' the public; And, as a result, how those strategies reconfigure the traditional boundaries between government and citizen. The project aims to show that the republican idea of duty has gained renaissance and paved the way for new understandings of patriotism.

This project is undertaken by Vibeke Schou Tjalve, the Danish Institute for Military Studies, and Karen Lund Petersen, CAST. The expected outcome is a peer reviewed journal article.

In Good Company? The Politics of Privatization and Partnerships in the European Debates on PSCs




In both the academic and political debates on Private Security Companies (PSCs), the link between the private company and the state is primarily expressed in terms of laws and control; a focus on the legal regulation and contract management, which by and large emphasize the modern ideal of control and management as the yardstick of political success. However, increasingly we also see an attempt to activate security responsibilities amongst private companies in ways that go beyond the formalised contract e.g. by calling for corporate patriotism and informal partnerships. In such understanding, privatization is much more than a move of responsibility from the public to the private sector, but implies a need for the companies to act and think politically. This project explores this tension in the use of the concept of privatisation by investigating the main European think tank reports and policy documents on the role of PSCs, and shows that there is a need for alternative understanding of the ‘privatisation of security’ – one that acknowledges and renders visible the politics of corporate decision-making.

The project is undertaken by Karen Lund Petersen and is expected to be published as a chapter in a book on Private Security Companies.

Terrorism: corporate risk and national security (re)stated

The book project ‘Terrorism: corporate risk and national security (re)stated’ investigates the role of private companies (airports, airlines, ports and food production companies) in Danish and American counter-terrorism policies; aiming to understand how the current involvement and subjectivation of private companies challenge the modern understandings of national security and corporate risk.

Current research topics

• Corporate policies on terrorism risk, Denmark, UK and US

• Private Military Companies

• Danish homeland security

• Terrorism insurance

• Risk society

Latest Publications

• Gad, UP & Petersen, KL 2011, ' Concepts of politics in securitization studies ', Security Dialogue , vol 42, no. 4-5, pp. 315-328.

• Petersen, KL 2011, ' Risk: a Field Within Security Studies ', European Journal of International Relations .

• Tjalve, VS & Petersen, KL 2011, ' Counterterrorism and the Return of the Republican Patriot ', International Political Sociology .  

• Petersen, KL 2008, ' Risk, responsibility and roles redefined: is counter-terrorism a corporate responsibility ', Cambridge Review of International Affairs , vol 21, no. 3, pp. 403-420. 

• Petersen, KL 2008, ' Terrorism: When Risk Meets Security ', Alternatives - Global Local Political , vol 33, no. 2, pp. 173-190.

• Petersen, KL 2008, ' Review of Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen: The Risk Society at War: Terror, Technology and Strategy in the Twenty First Century. Cambridge University Press, 2006 ', Millennium - Journal of International Studies , vol 36, no. 3, pp. 657-659.

• Petersen, KL 2008 , Terrorism: Corporate Risk and National Security (Re)Stated, PhD thesis, Ph.d. dissertation 2, Ph.d. - Serien 2, Københavns Universitet, Kbh..