BOOK
This book reviews the formative years of the United Nations (UN) under its first Secretary-General Trygve Lie.
This welcome appraisal shows how the foundations for an expanded secretary-general role were laid during this period, and that Lie’s contribution was greater than has later been acknowledged. The interplay of crisis decision-making, institutional constraints and the individuals involved thus built the foundations for the UN organization we know today.
Addressing important wider questions of IGO creation, governance and autonomy, this is an incisive account of how the UN moved from paper to practice under Lie.
The book has been reviewed in International Peacekeeping (2023).
ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
‘Archives,’ in Fanny Badache, Leah R. Kimber, and Lucile Maertens, eds., International Organizations and Research Methods: An Introduction (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2023), pp. 124-131.
‘International organisations in historical perspective,’ in Benjamin de Carvalho, Julia Costa Lopez, and Halvard Leira, eds., Routledge Handbook of Historical International Relations (London & New York: Routledge, 2021), pp. 330-340.
‘Secretaries general and crisis management – Trygve Lie and Dag Hammarskjöld at the United Nations,’ in Karen Gram-Skjoldager, Haakon A. Ikonomou, and Torsten Kahlert, eds., Organizing the 20th-Century World: International Organizations and the Emergence of International Public Administration, 1920-1960s (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), pp. 183-197.
‘A Guardian of the UN Charter: The UN Secretary-General at Seventy-Five,’ Ethics & International Affairs 34:3 (2020), pp. 279-304.
‘Colonies, semi-sovereigns, and great powers: IGO membership debates and the transition of the international system,’ Review of International Studies 46:2 (2020), pp. 278-298.
with Edward Newman, 'The International Civil Service,' in Diane Stone and Kim Moloney, eds., Oxford Handbook of Global Policy and Transnational Administration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 165-181.
‘Acting Like a State: Non-European Membership of International Organisations in the Nineteenth Century,’ in Jens Bartelson, Martin Hall, and Jan Teorell, eds., De-Centering State Making: Comparative and International Perspectives (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018), pp. 175-196.
‘Trygve Lie (1946-1953),’ in Manuel Fröhlich and Abiodun Williams, eds., The UN Secretary-General and the Security Council: A Dynamic Relationship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 22-41.
'"A Force for Peace": Expanding the Role of the UN Secretary-General under Trygve Lie, 1946-1953,' Global Governance 23:3 (2017), pp. 443-459.
'La mission la plus impossible au monde: Le Secrétaire général Trygve Lie face à la Guerre froide, 1946-1953' [The Most Impossible Job in the World: UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie and the Cold War, 1946-1953], Revue d'histoire diplomatique 2 (2016), pp. 145-161. English version available here.
‘”The First Major Test”: The UN Secretary-General and the Palestine Problem, 1947-1949,’ the International History Review 38:1 (2016), pp. 196-213.
’Exit Britain: British Withdrawal From the Palestine Mandate in the Early Cold War’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 21:3 (2010), pp. 416-433.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
'International Organisations, Authority, and the First Permanent Secretariats in the 19th Century,' STANCE Working Paper Series no. 5 (2017), Department of Political Science, Lund University.
with James P. Muldoon, Jr., 'Lie, Trygve Halvdan,' in IO BIO, Biographical Dictionary of Secretaries-General of International Organizations, edited by Bob Reinalda, Kent J. Kille and Jaci Eisenberg, www.ru.nl/fm/iobio (published 22 Oct 2017).
'From an Inclusive to an Exclusive International Order: Membership of International Organisations From the 19th to the 20th Century,' STANCE Working Paper Series no. 8 (2016), Department of Political Science, Lund University.
'The appointment of Trygve Lie as the first UN Secretary-General,' One World Trust background briefs for the 1 for 7 billion campaign, Brief no. 3, May 2016, https://www.1for7billion.org/s/3_Ravndal.pdf.
BOOK REVIEWS
Review of Jørgen Jensehaugen, Arab-Israeli Diplomacy under Carter: The US, Israel and the Palestinians (London & New York: IB Tauris, 2018), Journal of Peace Research Book Notes, published online 20 August 2019.
Review of Danilo Di Mauro, The UN and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: American hegemony and UN intervention since 1947 (New York: Routledge, 2012), in Journal of International and Global Studies 6:1 (2014), pp. 166-168.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS (last 5 years)
ISA Annual Convention, Montreal, 15-18 March 2023.
Nasjonal fagkonferanse i statsvitenskap, Kristiansand, 9-11 January 2023.
NEON-konferansen, Drammen, 22-24 November 2022.
‘Divided Together’? International Organizations and the Cold War, University of Vienna, 2-3 June 2022.
The 14th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, virtual meeting, 13-17 September 2021.
STANCE conference: ‘State Making and Global Order in Historical-Comparative Perspective,’ Lund University, 2-3 September 2021.
EWIS workshop, virtual meeting, 30 June - 3 July 2021.
ACUNS Annual Meeting, virtual meeting, 24-26 June 2021.
Workshop: ‘Scandinavian Multilateral Diplomacy: From the League of Nations to post-war IOs,’ University of Copenhagen, virtual meeting, 2-4 September 2020.
ACUNS Annual Meeting, virtual meeting, 25-27 June 2020.
Workshop: ‘The League of Nations Decentred: Law, Crises and Legacies,’ University of Melbourne Law School, 17-19 July 2019.
ACUNS Annual Meeting, Stellenbosch, 19-21 June 2019.
ISA Annual Convention, Toronto, 27-30 March 2019.