Conflict, Security & Development Research Group

The Conflict Security and Development Research Group (CSDRG) undertakes a wide range of research, policy, advisory, and teaching activities related to conflict, security and development, enabling it to serve as a true bridge between academic scholarship and real world decision-making in these fields.

We teach the world-leading Conflict, Security and Development MA programme and publish the Conflict, Security and Development journal.

Director: Professor Mats Berdal
Research Director: Dr Kieran Mitton

Members

Abiodun Alao

Professor of African Studies

Mats Berdal

Professor of Security & Development

Sofia Busch

Visiting Research Associate

Christine Cheng

Senior Lecturer in International Relations

Amanda Chisholm

Senior Lecturer in Security Studies / Researcher in Gender and Security

Adam Day

Visiting Senior Research Fellow

Vinicius de Carvalho

Vice Dean (International), Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy

Cristal Downing

PhD Candidate

Rebekka Friedman

Senior Lecturer in International Relations

Whitney Grespin

PhD Candidate

Stacey Gutkowski

Reader in Peace and Conflict Studies

Dylan Hendrickson

Senior Fellow and Editor, Conflict, Security & Development

Georgina Holmes

Visiting Research Fellow

Ashley Jackson

PhD Candidate

Jonathan Leader Maynard

Lecturer in International Politics

Reinoud Leenders

Reader in International Politics and Middle East Studies

Anatol Lieven

Visiting Professor

Kieran Mitton

Reader in Conflict, Security and Development

Adnan Naseemullah

Reader in International Politics

Eleonora Natale

Lecturer in International History

Kseniya Oksamytna

Visiting Research Fellow on ESRC-funded project ‘Democratization and UN Peacebuilding’

'Funmi Olonisakin

Vice President (International, Engagement & Service)

Sukanya Podder

Reader in Post-War Reconstruction and Peacebuilding

Domitilla Sagramoso

Senior Lecturer in Security and Development

Oisín Tansey

Professor of International Politics

David Ucko

Senior Visiting Research Fellow

James Verini

Visiting Research Fellow

Raúl Zepeda Gil

PhD Student

Pauline Zerla

PhD Candidate and Research Assistant

Democratisation and UN peacebuilding

Dr Oisin Tansey leads this ESRC-funded project, working alongside Co-Investigators Dr Sarah Von Billerbeck and Birte Gippert. It examines the relationship between peacebuilding and authoritarianism and the ways in which peacebuilding shapes authoritarianism at the local level. The project runs from June 2018 - May 2021 and focuses on four case studies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Cambodia, and Liberia.

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Mapping the Taliban

Funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Professor Ashley Jackson runs a fieldwork-intensive research project exploring the Taliban and communities under their control. Based on interviews with noncombatants, local Taliban members, and senior Taliban leadership, this study offers insights into their views on peace talks and the prospects for postwar reconciliation and justice.

Report - 'Perspectives on Peace from Taliban Areas of Afghanistan'

Report - Insurgent Bureaucracy: How the Taliban Makes Policy

Street gangs and youth marginality in Sierra Leone

Led by Dr Kieran Mitton, this British Academy-funded project (2019-2020) explores Sierra Leone's under-researched nascent gang-scene. In collaboration with Professor Ibrahim Abdullah from Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone, it draws on extensive fieldwork to provide new insights on, and solutions to, youth marginality and urban violence.

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Track II Mediation Unit

This unit combines the research group's core scholarly strengths with diplomatic experience to contribute to international attempts to prevent and resolve intractable intrastate conflicts. While this diplomatic work is deliberately discreet, the unit has enjoyed significant success in shaping international attempts to foster peace processes. Under the purview of CSDRG director Professor Mats Berdal, the work is directed by Tom Hill (formerly special assistant to Kofi Annan) and funded by the Peace and Reconciliation Section of the Royal Norwegian Foreign Ministry.

Winter-Spring 2020 Newsletter

CSDRG releases quarterly newsletters sharing our latest news, publications, and research.

CSDRG Newsletter - Spring/Summer 2021

CSDRG Newsletter - Autumn/Winter 2020

CSDRG Newsletter - Winter-Spring 2020

CSDRG Newsletter - Autumn 2019

CSDRG Newsletter - Summer 2019

CSDRG Newsletter - Winter/Spring 2019

CSDRG Newsletter - Autumn 2018

CSDRG Newsletter - Summer 2018

Conflict, Security and Development Journal cover

CSD Journal

Conflict, Security and Development is an academic, peer-reviewed journal that bridges traditional development and security studies and provides analysis of the critical policy challenges facing countries in the Global South. Enquiries should be directed to csdjournal@kcl.ac.uk.

CSD journal

Policy Briefs

CSDRG produces policy briefs on a wide range of issues related to conflict, security and development to inform and influence policymaking.

Women’s participation in peace negotiations and the durability of peace

Selecting Truth Commissioners: Peace and reconciliation in Colombia

Seleccción de Comisionados de la Verdad: La Paz y la reconciliaciónen Colombia

Select Recent Publications

For full list of publications, see individual staff profiles.

Berdal, Mats (2019) "NATO's Landscape of the Mind: Stabilisation and Statebuilding in Afghanistan," Ethnopolitics, 18 (5).
Berdal, Mats (2018) "What are the limits to the use of force in UN peacekeeping?" in de Coning, C. & Peter, M. (eds.) United Nations Peace Operations in a Changing Global Order (Palgrave Macmillan) p. 113-132.
Berdal, Mats & Suhrke, A. (2018) "A Good Ally: Norway and International Statebuilding in Afghanistan, 2001-2014," The Journal of Strategic Studies, 41 (2), p. 1-28.
Berdal, Mats (2018) "The State of UN Peacekeeping: Lessons from Congo" Journal of Strategic Studies, 41 (5), p. 721-750.
Cheng, Christine and Alison Brettle (2019) "How Cognitive Frameworks Shape the American Approach to International Relations and Security Studies," Journal of Global Security Studies, 4 (3), pp. 321–344.
Cheng, Christine (2018) Extralegal Groups in Post-Conflict Liberia: How Trade Makes the State (Oxford, Oxford University Press.)
Chisholm, A. and Eichler, M. (2018) “The Private within the Private: Accounting for the Household in Global Privatisation of Security” International Feminist Journal of Politics
Davies, M. and Chisholm, A. (2018) “Neoliberalism and Sexual Violence: A Reading of Dollhouse” International Political Sociology
Chisholm, A. and Tidy, J. (2017) “Beyond the Hegemonic in the study of militaries, masculinities and war” Critical Military Studies. 3(2): 99-102
Chisholm A. (2017) “Client, Contractor and the Everyday Masculinities in Global Private Security” Critical Military Studies. 3(2): 120-141
Eaton, Tim, Christine Cheng, Renad Mansour, Peter Salisbury, Jihad Yazigi, Lina Khatib (2019)“Conflict Economies in the Middle East and North Africa,” Chatham House Report. London: Chatham House.
De Carvalho, Vinicius Mariano and Rafael Duarte Villa, Thiago Rodrigues, Henrik Breitenbauch (2015) "Brazilian Participation in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations," Journal for Brazilian Studies, 3 (2).
Hendrickson, Dylan (2014) Security Sector Reform and Burma’s Political Transition, Report commissioned by the UK Stabilisation Unit, Feb. 2014.
Friedman, R. C. (2017) Competing Memories: Truth and Reconciliation in Sierra Leone and Peru. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gates, S. & Podder, S. (2015) "Social media, recruitment, allegiance and the Islamic State". Perspectives on Terrorism, 9(4).
Gasbarri,Flavia (2018) "From the Sands of the Ogaden to Black Hawk Down: The End of the Cold War in the Horn of Africa", Cold War History, 18:1, 73-89.
Gasbarri, Flavia (2018) "Revisiting the Linkage: PDD 25, Genocide in Rwanda and the US Peacekeeping Experience of the 1990s", The International History Review, 40:4, 792-813
Heydemann, S. and Leenders, R. (eds) (2013) Middle East Authoritarianisms: Governance, Contestation, and Regime Resilience in Syria and Iran. Stanford University Press.
Karlsrud, K and Oksamytna, K. (2018) "Norms and Practices in UN Peacekeeping: Evolution and Contestation", International Peacekeeping, 26 (3), 253-254.
Leenders, R. & Mansour, K. (2018) "Humanitarianism, State Sovereignty, and Authoritarian Regime Maintenance in the Syrian War", Political Science Quarterly, 133 (2), p. 225-257.
Mitton, Kieran (2019) "Public health and violence", Critical Public Health, 29(2), p. 135-137.
Mitton, Kieran (2018) "Elite Bargains and Political Deals Project: Sierra Leone Case Study", Elite Bargains and Political Deals Project 1 Feb 2018. London: UK Stabilisation Unit.
Mitton, Kieran (2015) Rebels in a Rotten State: Understanding Atrocity in the Sierra Leone Civil War (Hurst/Oxford University Press).
Oksamytna, Kseniya (2018) ‘Policy entrepreneurship by international bureaucracies: The evolution of public information in UN peacekeeping’, International Peacekeeping, 25 (1).
Olonisakin, F., Hendricks, C. & Okech, A. (2015) "The convergence and divergence of three pillars of influence in gender and security,"Africa Security Review, 24(4), p. 376-389
Olonisakin, O. (ed.) (2015) "Human Security, Peace and Conflict: African Perspectives", Strategic Review of Southern Africa, 37, 1.
Sagramoso, Domitilla (2007) 'Violence and Conflict in the Russian North Caucasus’, International Affairs, 83 (4), pp. 681-705.
Tansey, Oisin (2018) "Regional Autocratic Linkages and Regime Survival", with Alexander Schmotz, European Journal of Political Research, 57 (3).
Tansey, Oisin (2018) ‘Lowest Common Denominator Norm Institutionalization: The Anti-Coup Norm at the United Nations’, Global Governance, 24 (2), 2018.
Tansey, Oisin (2016) The International Politics of Authoritarian Rule. Oxford University Press.
Von Billerbeck, S. & Tansey, O. (2019) "Enabling autocracy? Peacebuilding and post-conflict authoritarianism in the Democratic Republic of Congo", European Journal of International Relations, 25 (3), p. 698-722.