Dr Dan Watson

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Biography

Research interests: Civil wars, peacebuilding, post-conflict statebuilding, political economy of conflict, African politics, South Sudan, Somalia, Horn of Africa

I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow working on the Horizon 2020 funded project ‘Violence, Elites and Resilience in States Under Stress’ (VERSUS). This project maps elite networks and their relationships to state institutions, exploring patterns of conflict, collusion, elite accommodation, and violence. The project aims to identify those elites who benefit from the existing political system; the mechanisms through which this system is reproduced; and the credible threats to the status quo.

My PhD - 'Militarised Post-Conflict Statebuilding: Explaining South Sudan's War-to-War Transition' - focused on the relationship between statebuilding, violence, and militarism in South Sudan. In my thesis, I concentrated on the military politics of South Sudan; their effects on the type of state being built around these military forces; and how politico-military rivalries played out across and subverted post-conflict security and institution-building instruments favoured by external donors.

I am interested in a number of dimensions of civil war and peacemaking, including peace processes; post-conflict statebuilding; Disarmament, Demobalisation and Reintegration; and Security Sector Reform, and how these intersect with patterns and forms of political violence.

This year I am convening the MA Contemporary African Issues module. I have previously convened the MA module 'Peace Processes and Post-Conflict Reconstruction' (IR), as well the international summer school module ‘Issues in International Security’. I have also taught a number of modules across the fields of International Relations and International Development, including the first-year modules 'Colonialism and After' (Development), 'The International System Today: Powers and Regions' (IR), and 'Global Issues' (IR); and the second-year modules 'War in International Politics' (IR), 'The Politics of Foreign Policy' (IR), 'Security & Insecurity in Global Politics' (IR) and 'Development and the State' (Development).

Role

Postdoctoral researcher

Qualifications

BA Politics (University of Sussex); MA Conflict, Development and Security (University of Leeds); PhD International Relations (University of Sussex)