Dr Kate Ferguson is an internationally recognised foreign policy expert driving a new approach to preventing mass violence.

She is the Co-Executive Director and Head of Policy and Research at Protection Approaches, which she co-founded in 2014 to transform how identity-based violence is understood and so transform how it is prevented. She is Chair of Policy at the European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Dr Ferguson has trained and advised state representatives, parliamentarians, and law enforcement around the world including on developing national and local atrocity prevention. In 2021 Dr Ferguson was appointed as Specialist Adviser to the International Development Committee for the duration of its inquiry Promoting dialogue and preventing atrocities: the UK government approach. She has a PhD on the dynamics of modern mass atrocities from the University of East Anglia and MPhil in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Oxford. Her book, Architectures of Violence: The Command Structures of Modern Mass Atrocities was published in 2020 by Hurst and Oxford University Press.

 

Research

• Atrocity prevention
• Conflict prevention
• UK foreign policy
• Genocide studies
• the Responsibility to Protect
• Intersectional, queer and feminist prevention
• Identity-based violence
• Serious and organised crime
• Violent extremism
• Opening pathways to policy

Kate’s research explores how identity-based violence and atrocity crimes are understood and can prevented. Her new research is exploring the future of UK foreign policy.

Selected publications

Books

• Kate Ferguson, Architectures of violence: The Command Structures of Modern Mass Atrocities, Hurst Publishers, (2020)

Book chapters

• ‘Genocide in Bosnia’, in A Routledge History of Genocide, ed. Profs. Cathie Carmichael
  Research articles
• Kate Ferguson, “For the Wind is in the Palm Trees: The 2017 Rohingya Crisis and an Emergent UK Approach to Atrocity Prevention,” Global Responsibility to Protect, Vol.13 Is. 2-3, pp.244-271, 2021
• Kate Ferguson, Countering violent extremism through media and communication strategies, A review of the evidence, Partnership for Conflict, Crime and Security Research, University of Cambridge, 2016

Policy papers

• Kate Ferguson, Fred Carver, “Being the difference: A primer for states wishing to prevent atrocity crimes in the mid-twenty-first century,” Protection Approaches, 24 November 2021
• Kate Ferguson, Alexandra Buskie, “Linked up and linked in: networking local-international early warning and early response in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Protection Approaches, June 2021
• Kate Ferguson, Michael Jones, “Between War and Peace: Preventing Mass Atrocities Outside Armed Conflict,” RUSI, 21 May 2021
• Kate Ferguson, A response to the Integrated Review, Foreign Policy Centre, 18 March 2021
• Kate Ferguson, Putting atrocity prevention at the heart of British foreign policy, Foreign Policy Centre, 8 Sept 2020

Media articles

• Kate Ferguson, The Government must focus urgently on the prevention and punishment of mass atrocities by Russia, Conservative Home, Feb 2022
• Kate Ferguson, “Genocide Designations Aren’t Enough to Stop Mass Atrocities,” World Politics Review, 7 September 2021
• Kate Ferguson, Sudan is heading for atrocity once again. The UK government must not sit by, The Guardian,13 June 2019
• Kate Ferguson, As Tensions Escalate In Kachin, Why Is The UK Not Doing More?, Huffington Post, 22 July 2018