Welcome.
I am Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo and PI of the ERC Starting Grant project ‘ResilienceBuilding: Social Resilience, Gendered Dynamics, and Local Peace in Protracted Conflicts’.
My research focuses on topics in the field of international security, war and armed conflict, and social resilience and peacebuilding. I work especially on gender, peace and security; climate change and social resilience; communal violence and civil wars; and local and international peace processes. I have conducted extensive fieldwork on these topics in Indonesia and Nigeria, and more recently in Myanmar, Kenya, and South Sudan.
My first book, Resilient Communities (CUP 2018), won the 2019 Lee Ann Fuji Award from APSA’s Interpretivist Methodologies and Methods Group. I am co-editor of the book Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings (OUP 2023).
From 2023 to 2025, I was Program Director for the MA Peace and Conflict Studies (PECOS) at the University of Oslo.
I completed my PhD in Political Science/International Relations at the Geneva Graduate Institute (2013). Before coming to Oslo, I was an Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam and a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London. I have also held visiting positions at the British Institute in Eastern Africa (Nairobi), the Hertie School in Berlin, Yale University, and Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Resilience Building
Social Resilience, Gendered Dynamics, and Local Peace in Protracted Conflicts
Can local peace processes build social resilience and contribute to sustainable peace? How does gendered civilian agency shape community structures and the potential to prevent violence? Do international resilience building interventions make local communities less vulnerable to the impact of the climate crisis and the risk of renewed conflict?
The research team addresses these questions with a focus on Nigeria, Kenya, and South Sudan. The team brings together researchers with complementary skills sets who implement multi-method approaches, combining in-depth interviewing and ethnographic observation with event data analysis, survey research, and archival work.
