About the KNOWLEDGE Centre

Mission

Interpol’s Centre for the International Politics of Knowledge – or short: KNOWLEDGE Centre – aims to develop research in a number of areas, which revolve around the dynamics and challenges of knowledge and its production in and about international politics.

Research strands

The KNOWLEDGE Centre pursues research projects in two distinct but highly interrelated areas:

Knowledge Production, Expertise and Evidence in International Politics

Projects scrutinise:

  • conditions of possibility of dominant knowledges and ways of knowing in international politics.
  • The interplay of expert, scientific and indigenous knowledges in the policy-making processes in different fields of international/global politics.
  • processes of how knowledge is produced in different international political environments, such as international organisations, state bureaucracies, INGOs etc.
  • key knowledge-related policy tools in international politics, such as ‘local ownership’, ‘evidence-based policy making’, and ‘measurement’.
  • implications of the assumptions, paradigms and approaches brought to bear on knowledge production in international political and academic practice.

History, Philosophy and Sociology of Knowledge, Science and Technology

Projects focus on:

  • the socio-historical investigation of knowledge, science, technology, and expertise as objects of international and world politics.
  • the inter-national, trans-national, and global structures and processes governing the constitution, circulation, exchange, and use of knowledge.
  • a cross-disciplinary understanding of the nature, values, impact, and challenges of contemporary knowledges, and their role in socio-political projects from global governance to emancipation and economic development.
  • a reflexive understanding of ‘International Relations’ as an expert field of knowledge.
  • philosophical and theoretical study of knowledge, ways of knowing and limits of knowledge in the social sciences.