PhD De­fence: Christina Ples­ner Volk­dal

In order to obtain the PhD degree, Christina Plesner Volkdal has submitted her thesis entitled:

Unraveling the Triple Nexus:

Exploring the Intersections between Humanitarian, Development, and Peacebuilding Interventions

This PhD thesis examines how the Humanitarian–Development–Peace Nexus (Triple Nexus) is implemented in practice and how its operationalization can be strengthened. While widely promoted as a transformative framework for addressing protracted crises, the Triple Nexus remains challenged by conceptual ambiguity, institutional fragmentation, and limited empirical grounding. Drawing on a pragmatic constructivist approach and institutional ethnography, the thesis analyses how the Triple Nexus is negotiated across organizational and systemic levels through five peer-reviewed articles. Empirical cases include UNICEF’s global Nexus implementation, humanitarian–development supply chains for gender-based violence services in Asia and the Pacific, and grassroots responses by the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society during an economic crisis. The findings show that Nexus coherence emerges through negotiation, adaptation, and contextual learning rather than fixed policy models. The thesis contributes by reframing the Triple Nexus as an emergent system of practice and offering a cross-level analytical framework for understanding humanitarian–development–peace integration.

The thesis will be available from research.cbs.dk