COUNCIL

Hugh Miall

President

Kristin Bakke

Chair

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Finn Klebe

Interim Strategic Director

John Gledhill

Membership Secretary

Imrana Alhaji Buba

Secretary

Hilary Adams

Treasurer

Corinne Bara

Chair of the Book Prize

Sebastian van Baalen

Chair of the Cedric Smith Prize

Christine Cheng

Co-Chair of Sydney Bailey Prize

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Kit Rickard

Co-Chair of Sydney Bailey Prize

Valerie Sticher

Chair of Emerging Scholars Initiative

Teresa Dumasy

Head of Practice Working Group

Ana Lucía Pelaez Echeverría

Conference organiser and Communications Manager

Alexandra Rice

Conference Organiser

ADVISORY BOARD

Oliver Ramsbotham

Gordon Burt

Tom Woodhouse

Nadine Ansorg

Judith Large

Andrew Thomson

Catalina Montoya Londono

Herbert Blumberg

Isabel Phillips

Robert Nagel

Isadora Gotts

Govinda Clayton

Jennifer Hodge

Allard Duursma

Friends of the CRS

Marwan Darweish

Peter Emerson

Steve Pickering

Yeshim Harris

Julie Lloyd

Larry Attree

Ismene Gizelis

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Kristin Bakke

Co-Chair of Sydney Bailey Prize

Kristin M. Bakke is Professor in Political Science and International Relations at University College London (UCL) and Associate Research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). She holds a PhD and MA in political science from the University of Washington, Seattle, and has a BA in journalism and political science from Indiana University, Bloomington. She is from Norway.

Prior to joining UCL in 2009, Professor Bakke was a post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard University, at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (2007-2008), and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Leiden University (2008-2009).

She is an Associate Editor at Journal of Peace Research and serves on the advisory board of Nations and Nationalism, the editorial board of Journal of Global Security Studies, and sits on the council of the British Conflict Research Society.

Professor Bakke’s research focuses on political violence, drawing on in-depth fieldwork, public opinion surveys, and cross-case statistical analyses. The questions and topics that motivate her research include why some states are better able to avoid conflicts within their borders than others, how institutions can (or cannot) promote intrastate peace, the dynamics within self-determination movements, post-war state-building, and the reasons for states’ restrictions of civil society. Her book, Decentralization and Intrastate Struggles: Chechnya, Punjab, and Québec (Cambridge University Press, 2015), received the Conflict Research Society’s Book of the Year award in 2016. Her work has also appeared in the Annals of American Association of Geographers, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Nations and Nationalism, Perspectives on Politics, Political Geography, Regional and Federal Studies, and World Politics.

Christine Cheng

Co-Chair of Sydney Bailey Prize

Christine Cheng is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in War Studies at King’s College London. Dr Cheng is the award-winning author ofExtralegal Groups in Post-Conflict Liberia- How Trade Makes the State (OUP) and co-editor of Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Selling the Peace? (Routledge). Working with the UK government’s Stabilisation Unit, she co-authored Securing and Sustaining Elite Bargains that Reduce Violent Conflict, the final report of the influential Elite Bargains and Political Deals project on conflict-affected countries. She has previously worked with Chatham House on a UK DFID-funded study of Conflict Economies in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya (chosen as a top think tank report in the 2019 global rankings). From 2020-21, she was the Principal Investigator of a UK FCDO-funded project on Understanding Violent and Peaceful Behaviour. Dr Cheng is broadly interested in war-to-peace transitions, civil wars, state failure, the political economy of war, and research ethics. She has conducted research in West Africa, South Africa, Colombia, Iraq, and Guatemala.

At King’s, Dr Cheng teaches on the MA in Conflict, Security, and Development. Previously, she was the Boskey Fellow in Politics at Exeter College, Oxford and the Cadieux-Léger Fellow at Global Affairs Canada. She has worked for the UN and the World Bank. Dr Cheng holds a DPhil from Oxford (Nuffield), an MPA from Princeton (Woodrow Wilson School), and a BASc from the University of Waterloo.

Dr Cheng co-edits the book series on 21st Century Perspectives on War, Peace, and Human Conflict (Palgrave). She sits on the Board of Trustees of Conciliation Resources, the Scientific Advisory Board of Swisspeace. She founded Strife Blog (with over 1,000,000 page views annually until 2022) to give students a chance to get their writing published and the annual Conflict, Security, and Development Conference. Dr Cheng is also active in UK politics, having chaired the Liberal Democrats’ International Security policy working group.