Caroline Holmqvist is a scholar of war, ethics, and political violence who brings together International Relations, political theory, and philosophy. Based in Paris, her research traces the changing character of war — from interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, through drone warfare and targeted killing, to nuclear weapons and military AI — driven by questions about the ethical, perceptual, and ontological dimensions of violence. Drawing on thinkers such as Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Butler, and Günther Anders, she has developed a sustained inquiry into how war is seen, known, and morally encountered when mediated by technology and distance.
She is the author of Policing Wars: On Military Intervention in the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave, 2014) and co-editor of War, Police and Assemblages of Intervention (Routledge, 2015) and The Character of War in the 21st Century (Routledge, 2010). With Brad Evans she edited the 2025 Thesis Eleven special issue ‘Annihilation Aesthetics’, a collaboration with Mexican artist Chantal Meza. She also contributed a chapter to the 2024 MIT Press volume War and Aesthetics, and speaks regularly on war and peace at cultural institutions such as Stockholm’s Kulturhuset.
Caroline has held positions at the LSE, SIPRI, the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, and Tel Aviv University, and held the Eric Remacle Chair in Peace Studies at the Université libre de Bruxelles, awarded each year to a single international scholar. She advised the International Committee of the Red Cross, contributing to the 2008 Montreux Document on private military and security companies. She is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the Swedish Defence University.