Books

HÄNNI HAS PRODUCED A PROLIFIC PUBLICATION PROFILE AND A GLOBAL NETWORK OF COLLABORATORS. HE HAS LED MAJOR INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS ON THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF INTELLIGENCE SERVICES, TERRORISM, AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE, DEMONSTRATING HIS ABILITY TO SHAPE STATE OF THE ART RESEARCH.

Politische Geschichte: Eine Einführung in Theorien und Methoden

Hänni received a major grant from FernUni Schweiz (“Distance Learning University Switzerland”) to study past and present schools of political historiography and inquire how global political history of modern societies can be taught, studied, and written. He used the results to produce the first German-language textbook on Political History, which will be distributed throughout German speaking classrooms and university networks.

The textbook is created as a systematic, organizing, and synthesizing overview for students, lecturers, and researchers.

Publisher: Brill/UTB
Release date: 2023 Jan

Terrorism in the Cold War

Vol. 1: State Support in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Sphere of Influence

Vol. 2: State Support in the West, Middle East and Latin America

Hänni led an ambitious research effort aiming for a fresh and systematic assessment of the relations between states and terrorist groups during the Cold War. Together with Dr. Thomas Riegler (Vienna) and Dr. Przemyslaw Gasztold (Warsaw), he invited more than 20 scholars across Europe and the United States to contribute an original analysis of the relations between their country of expertise and terrorist actors. The collected articles present an in-depth assessment of the nature, motives, and effects of the relations between terrorist organizations and individual states of the Soviet bloc, NATO, as well as neutral countries such as Switzerland and Austria.

The results and analysis of this comprehensive body of research were published as two volumes in September 2020 by the renowned British publishing house Bloomsbury/I.B. Tauris.

Edited with Dr. Thomas Riegler and Dr. Przemyslaw Gasztold.

Publisher: Bloomsbury/I.B. Tauris
Release date: 2020 Sept

Über Grenzen hinweg: Transnationale Politische Gewalt im 20. Jahrhundert

Until recently, historians have rarely analyzed extreme political violence through a transnational lens. Hänni developed a comprehensive theoretical framework that builds on History, Political Science, Sociology and International Relations paradigms to study transnationality as a key aspect of modern political violence. This reconceptualization of transnationality is a methodological innovation that can be applied to other forms of transnational activities, including counterterrorism and anti-radicalization measures. To test his theory, he invited an international group of scholars to apply this framework to diverse case studies from the 20th century.

The resulting book was published in 2020 by Campus, a leading German academic publishing house.

Edited with Dr. Daniel Rickenbacher and Thomas Schmutz.

Publisher: Campus
Release date: 2020

Terrorismus als Konstrukt: Schwarze Propaganda, politische Bedrohungsängste und der Krieg gegen den Terrorismus in Reagans Amerika

Building on his PhD research, this book was groundbreaking in offering the first application of theoretical and methodological thoughts developed by critical terrorism scholars to primary source-based historiography. It analyzes the production of scientific, journalistic, and political knowledge on terrorism in the United States during the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) and, among other insights, shows how this knowledge rationalized militarization of US counter-terrorism policy in the mid-1980s.

The 2018 book was published as part of the prestigious series “Krieg und Frieden” (“War and Peace”) with German publishing house Klartext Verlag.

Publisher: Klartext Verlag
Release date: 2018