Dr Annette Idler receives Social Sciences Knowledge Exchange Fellowship Award

Congratulations to Annette Idler, who has been given a Social Sciences Knowledge Exchange Fellowship Award for her project on 'Putting Frontier Research into Action: Co-designing Security Policies to Tackle Violent Non-state Groups in Peripheral Spaces'.  This project is supported by Principal Investigator Professor Dominic Johnson.

Conflicts involving violent non-state groups have become the most lethal form of violence in today’s world, producing severe economic and social hardship, and concurrent flows of refugees.  There is a global trend of proliferation of violent non-state groups, with around 6,000 counted by the Carter Center in Syria.  Such conflicts are a priority for the UK’s and the international community’s security policies.  Given the urgency of current crises, we often fail to fully develop research and lessons from engagement with long-running conflicts which have reached, or are close to finding, a peaceful settlement.

Annette’s timely research contributes directly to this strategic need.  Colombia’s High Commissioner for Peace and the British Ambassador to Colombia have sought advice from Annette on the post-conflict strategy, demonstrating the immediate usefulness of her work.  As Director of Studies at the Changing Character of War (CCW) Programme, Annette has acquired the expertise necessary to transform the lessons from the Colombian case into training for UN staff worldwide.

This project will run from 1 November 2015 to 31 July 2016.