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Speakers: Dr Alison Brettle, Lecturer, Defence Studies Department, King's College London

Dr Christine Cheng, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, King's College London

Chair: Pauline Zerla, PhD student, Department of War Studies, King's College London

Bios:

Dr Alison Brettle: Dr Alison Brettle is a Lecturer in the Defence Studies Department at King's College London. She teaches at the Royal College of Defence Studies and at the UK’s Defence Academy. Her research examines war- to-peace transitions, with a specific focus on the desertion, demobilisation and integration of violent armed groups in the Great Lakes Region (Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda). She is particularly interested in the role relationships play in helping individuals and groups move away from conflict towards peace.

She holds a PhD in War Studies from King's and was previously a visiting researcher at the Centre for Experimental Social Science at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. She also holds an MA in Applied Conflict Resolution from the Peace Studies Department at the University of Bradford and an MA in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Staffordshire. Before joining King's, Alison worked as a broadcast journalist, presenter and media trainer in the UK, GCC and West Africa.

Dr Christine Cheng: Christine Cheng is Lecturer in War Studies at King’s College London. Dr Cheng is the author of Extralegal Groups in Post-Conflict Liberia- How Trade Makes the State (OUP), winner of the 2019 Conflict Research Society’s Annual Book Prize.

She co-edited Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Selling the Peace? (Routledge) with Dominik Zaum. She co-authored Securing and Sustaining Elite Bargains that Reduce Violent Conflict (with Jonathan Goodhand and Patrick Meehan), the final report of the UK Stabilisation Unit’s two-year project on Elite Bargains and Political Deals in conflict-affected countries. She is co-author on a DFID and Dutch-MFA-funded Chatham House study of Conflict economies in the Middle East and North Africa.

Pauline Zerla: Pauline Zerla is a peacebuilding and reintegration researcher with 10 years of project design and management experience in fragile and conflict-affected states including the DRC, CAR, Nigeria, and Somalia. She joined the War Studies department in 2020 and under the supervision of Rachel Kerr, Ted Barker and Kieran Mitton researches how ex-combatants’ psychosocial experiences of war shape their reintegration. Her research mostly focuses on the reintegration of ex-combatants, the impact of trauma among armed group members, and veterans' return from war.

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At this event

Dr Christine Cheng

Senior Lecturer in International Relations

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