Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard

Primary research areas

Rasmus Søndergaard’s research focuses on US foreign policy. He specializes in the role of human rights and democracy promotion in American foreign relations and tensions between liberal values and national security interests. He is also interested in diplomacy, global order, and transatlantic relations.

Current research

Democracy and Human Rights in US Foreign Policy

Rasmus Søndergaard’s current research examines American visions for uniting the democracies of the world from the Cold War to the present. In his research in general, he focuses on both policymakers and non-state actors and is particularly attentive to the interplay between domestic politics and foreign policy, i.a., the role of Congress and presidential elections. His regional focus is primarily on transatlantic relations, including cultural and political aspects of Danish-American interactions during the Cold War.

In 2020, Rasmus published the book, Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights (Cambridge University Press), which traces the role of human rights concerns in US foreign policy during the 1980s.

Scandinavian Human Rights Diplomacy at the United Nations

Building on research conducted during the project “Economic and Social Rights in Scandinavian Diplomacy at the United Nations,” Rasmus is examining Scandinavian contributions to global debates on human rights and economic inequality in the 1970s. He is currently conducting this research within the workshop series “Scandinavian Internationalist Diplomacy, 1920s-1970s,” of which he is a co-organizer. 

The League of Nations and International Law

As a member of the collective research project “Laying the Foundations: The League of Nations and International Law, 1919-1945,” he is also working on a biographical article on the American lawyer Manley O. Hudson.