1. The Role of Rituals in Peace and Conflict Settings
Date: January 2024 – December 2026
Co-Investigator: Professor Chiara Ruffa, Sciences Po
In this project, we investigate how rituals structure interaction in peace and conflict settings, shaping the ways emotions are contained, hostility is managed, and fragile equilibriums are sustained. While classical theories of ritual emphasize their integrative potential, evidence from cases such as the UNIFIL Tripartite Meetings in South Lebanon shows that rituals can also reproduce antagonism, entrench divisions, and defer substantive political action. We approach rituals as micro-structures of global governance, examining how their choreography, repetition, and avoidance tactics generate both predictability and constraint. By extending this analysis across peacekeeping, mediation, and diplomatic forums, the project advances scholarship on the micro-politics of conflict management while offering practitioners insights into the ambivalent role of rituals: as mechanisms that stabilize hostile relations but may fall short of building genuine reconciliation.
2. Localizing the Women Peace and Security Agenda in the MENA Region
Date: January 2022 – October 2025.
Co-editor: Dr Bilge Sahin, Erasmus University.
This volume (Brill/De Gruyter, forthcoming 2026) offers the first systematic study of how the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is interpreted, adapted, and implemented across the Middle East and North Africa. Through detailed case studies of countries including Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Morocco, Tunisia, and the UAE, the book examines how local actors, governments, and international organizations negotiate the meaning of WPS in diverse political and cultural contexts. By highlighting both the opportunities and limits of WPS localization, the volume provides new insights into the dynamics of gender, security, and governance in a region often overlooked in global WPS scholarship.
3. The Oxford Handbook of Interpreting Peacekeeping
Co-editor: Professor Chiara Ruffa, Sciences Po
This forthcoming volume (Oxford University Press, 2027) brings together 43 leading scholars and practitioners to reframe peacekeeping as a field of study. The Handbook develops an interpretive and relational research agenda, highlighting how peace operations are shaped by everyday practices, narratives, and interactions rather than only by mandates or outcomes. By bridging feminist, constructivist, postcolonial, and practice-based approaches, it provides the most comprehensive account to date of how peacekeeping is understood, studied, and experienced across different contexts.
4. Manifesting Mandates: Navigating Ambiguity in UN Special Political Missions
Co-Investigator: Dr Tom Buitelaar, Universiteit Leiden
This project investigates how United Nations Special Political Missions (SPMs) translate the often ambiguous mandates and directives of the UN Security Council into action in complex conflict environments. As large military peace operations decline, SPMs are becoming central to conflict prevention, mediation, and peace agreement implementation, yet remain under-researched. Through comparative case studies in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, the project examines how SPM staff interpret top-down directives, navigate great power competition, and adapt to local political dynamics. In doing so, it sheds light on how authority and legitimacy in global governance are negotiated on the ground, offering new insights into the micro-politics of collective conflict management at a time of crisis in multilateralism.
Vanessa F Newby PhD 