Debate Political Violence, Repression and Arbitrary Detention in Egypt: the case of Patrick George Zaky History repeats itself if you do not know how to draw lessons from it. Giulio Regeni was an Italian PhD student at the University of Cambridge who was kidnapped on ⋙
Debate Are Some Sahelian Jihadist Groups ‘Antifragile’? Over recent years, jihadists have had a string of tactical wins against West African armies. Evidence from their attacks on Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) suggests that the ‘antifragile’ character of ⋙
Field Missing Pieces in a Weapons Seizure in Northern Shan State On the 22nd November 2019 press releases started circulating on Myanmar social media and news outlets concerning what was defined as one of the largest weapons seizures carried out by ⋙
Field From the borderlands to the centre: land travelling in Myanmar In the early 2000s, with an article entitled “Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance”, Willem van Schendel explored how areas are imagined and how knowledge constructs them into “heartlands” and ⋙
Debate Contrasting agendas: EU’s migration governance vs. West African governments’ priorities In the aftermath of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’, the EU should take into consideration what the real interests of their partners in West Africa and the Sahel are and accept ⋙
Debate Robot fighting: Libya and the wars of the future Intervening at the ISPI Med forum in Rome on December 7, 2019, the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Libya, Ghassane Salame, said that the current conflict in Libya ⋙
conflict Causalities and casualties: the perpetuation of violence in conflict-management operations That peace operations and crisis response mechanisms can fail to restore security is not news. What is less known, is that in many cases they can also have harmful outcomes ⋙
Field Conducting immersive fieldwork on Tunisian Islamic activism: Methodological and ethical challenges In recent years an increasing number of academic works have focused on the progressive securitization of research conducted in authoritarian contexts (Peter and Strazzari, 2017; Glasius et al., 2017), including ⋙
Field Fieldwork research challenged: constraints, needs and opportunities Scholars are increasingly aware that fieldwork research in conflict-prone, politically unstable or authoritarian areas can pose specific risks. To respond, at least in part, to such risks, academic institutions have ⋙
Debate A slap in the face of justice: the ICC and Afghanistan On 12 April 2019, the Pre-Trial Chamber III of the International Criminal Court rejected the request to open an official investigation on war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan ⋙
Debate Under the Rule of LAWS: Artificial Intelligence in Warfare Considered as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms, lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) pose many challenges and raise many questions within state institutions and the civil ⋙
Debate Reframing the fight against terrorism: can counter-narratives write a new story? With the loss of the last stronghold in Baghouz, ISIS has formally been defeated. However, according to the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, its threat could increase because of combatants returning ⋙
Debate Banal power for totalitarian systems Hannah Arendt’s famous thesis is as often quoted as misunderstood. While she was proven wrong in assessing Eichmann’s historical role and personality, even where she erred, she did ⋙
Field What comes first, disarmament or peace? Insights from fieldwork in Myanmar As the Myanmar peace process initiated by Thein Sein’s government in 2011 moves into its eighth year, two main contentious issues have always been at its core. First, there ⋙
Field Societal effects of countering violent extremism and radicalization in Kosovo Countering terrorism and preventing radicalization and violent extremism have taken center stage in donors’ and governmental policy agendas in Kosovo over the past 6 years. While many research and policy ⋙
Debate Death and rescue in the Central Mediterranean: overcoming the limits of private outsourcing The search-and-rescue operations in the Central Mediterranean were overall successful in saving thousands of lives in the years 2014-2017. Compared with the previous years, the rescues reduced and stabilised the ⋙
