DCU Conflict Institute
DCU Conflict Institute - People
DCU Staff Members
Dr Walt Kilroy
Dr Walt Kilroy is Co-Director of the DCU Conflict Institute and Assistant Professor at the School of Law and Government. His research interests include development, conflict, and post-war reconstruction, and the interactions between these processes. His teaching has included these topics, as well as international media and reporting. His doctoral thesis was awarded the Basil Chubb Prize for the best PhD in political science (2012) by the Political Studies Association of Ireland. It looked at the way in which ex-combatants were dealt with after the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa, through the programmes for Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR).
He was awarded a one-year postdoctoral fellowship at Dublin City University by the Irish Research Council (formerly IRCHSS). A monograph based on his thesis is published by Palgrave Macmillan (April 2015).
Walt previously worked in the Horn of Africa for the development organisation, Trócaire, on conflict and advocacy (2004-06). This focused on the Darfur conflict in Sudan, again involving research in the field. Prior to that, he worked in journalism for print, radio, and television, and was Deputy Foreign Editor at the Irish public service broadcaster, RTÉ.
Dr Sarah Léonard
Dr Sarah Léonard is Co-Director of the DCU Conflict Institute. Her research interests lie at the intersection between Security Studies and European Studies. She is particularly interested in the study of securitization processes and the development of the European Union’s internal security policies, especially those relating to asylum, migration and borders, policing, information exchange, as well as counter-terrorism. She holds a PhD in International Politics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, a Master of Arts in Russian and Eurasian Studies from the University of Leeds, as well as an MA in European Studies and a BA in Politics (International Relations) from the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium). She is also Professor of International Security at the University of South Wales.
Sara Ben Abdelouahab
Sara Ben Abdelouahab is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Research Fellow as part of the EU-GLOCTER Doctoral Network. Her research project focuses on the impact of conspiracy theories on violent extremism and what the European Union can do about it. Her research analyses Arabic social media content regarding the use of conspiracy theories by Jihadist extremists for the radicalisation and mobilisation of followers. With the help of her language skills (Arabic, Spanish, French and English) and her practical knowledge of cyber security issues, she aims to develop tools that will allow the European Union to better counter terrorist narratives and ideologies.
Dr Eldad Ben Aharon
Dr Eldad Ben Aharon is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Researcher in International Security at the School of Law and Government, DCU. He leads the research project titled: 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict and Israel's Foreign Policy: Securitization, Geopolitics, and Arms Trading.
He earned his PhD in History from Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2019, an MA with a focus on Holocaust and Genocide studies from the University of Amsterdam in 2014, and a BA in International Relations from the Open University in Jerusalem in 2011.
Dr Ben Aharon specialises in international relations and critical security studies, with a primary focus on the Middle East. His research interests revolve around the international history of the Middle East during the Cold War, primarily examined through archival research and interviews with prominent diplomats and intelligence elites.
His research has been published in leading academic journals such as the European Journal of International Security, Intelligence and National Security, and Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.
Dr Erika Biagini
Dr Erika Biagini is Assistant Professor in Security Studies in the School of Law and Government at DCU. Her area of expertise lies at the intersection of Islamism, gender and politics. She has lived in Egypt, where she conducted research on the Muslim Brotherhood and the activism of its female members, the Muslim Sisterhood, in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising. Her current research interests address the areas of subjectivity, identity and feminist politics among Islamist women activists, the gender politics and sexuality of Islamist movements and the evolution of Islamism, and of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in particular, since the 2013 repression.
She has published extensively on these subjects and her work appears in international peer reviewed journals such as Mediterranean Politics, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Egypte/Monde Arabe, Partecipazione e Conflitto, Middle East Law and Governance, Religions. Erika is a member of the Middle East Law and Governance Advisory Board and Editor of the Middle East Law and Governance Blog. She is also a member of the Irish Network for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, the Middle East Studies Association and the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies.
In DCU, she teaches courses on research methodologies, international security, intelligence and national security and intelligence and security analysis.
Professor Pat Brereton
Professor Emeritus Pat Brereton is an environmental communications and film scholar who has researched and published numerous papers on mediated conflict in Northern Ireland and across the world.
He is well versed in the power of audio-visual media - both fictional and documentary - in framing and addressing conflicts of all types. Connecting the existential climate crisis which is leading to often unforeseen global conflicts remains a preoccupation for his scholarship.
Dr Cátia Carvalho
Cátia Moreira de Carvalho is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Law and Governance of Dublin City University, working with Professor Christian Kaunert. Previously, Cátia was a researcher in the DRIVE project at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and the NEW ABC project at the University of Porto, Portugal. She is also an integrated researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations at Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
Cátia holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Porto (2017-2022), funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology, during which she investigated some of the factors explaining the absence of violent extremism within the context of Islamic-inspired terrorism in Portugal. During her PhD project, Cátia was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Criminology of the University of Cambridge (2020).
Her research interests focus on violent extremism, radicalization processes, foreign fighters, disinformation, and forced migrations.
Her work has been funded by the European Commission, the Foundation for Science and Technology, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and Public Safety Canada. Additionally, she is a member of ERCOR - European Researcher Community on Radicalisation, and the EU Knowledge Hub on Prevention of Radicalisation.
Dr Arpita Chakraborty
Dr Arpita Chakraborty is currently the Vice-Director of the Institute for Research on Genders and Sexualities (DCU). Her work lies at the cross section of gender, migration and diasporic studies from a postcolonial feminist perspective. She is the Principal Investigator of a project (2022-26) on migrant South Asian women’s experience of accessing support services in Ireland. She is specifically interested in looking at how ideas around gender, masculinities, and caste migrate transnationally and how it affects migrant women of colour in Europe. She actively seeks to collaborate with civil society partners outside academia in the co-production of knowledge and the communication of research findings for societal impact.
Her work has been published in leading international peer-reviewed publications including International Feminist Journal of Politics, Economic and Political Weekly, Religion and Gender, Routledge, and Cambridge University Press. She has led three research projects worth more than €500,000 funded by the Irish Research Council, and Ireland India Institute, and collaborated on various international research projects. In the School of Law and Government, she has created and taught modules on postcolonial politics, gender studies and masculinity studies to DCU’s undergraduate and postgraduate students. In her former role as an Editor, she has been in charge of the production of 13 top-rated academic journals from Sage Publications.
Prof. Maura Conway
Prof Maura Conway is Paddy Moriarty Professor of Government and International Studies in the School of Law and Government at DCU; professor of Cyber Threats in CYTREC at Swansea University, UK; and Coordinator of VOX-Pol, an EU-funded project on violent online political extremism (voxpol.eu). Prof Conway’s principal research interests are in the area of terrorism and the I nternet, including cyberterrorism, the functioning and effectiveness of extremist and terrorist online content, and online radicalisation. She is the author of over 40 articles and chapters in her specialist areas. Her research has appeared in, amongst others, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Media, War & Conflict, Parliamentary Affairs, and Social Science Computer Review. Prof Conway has presented her findings before the United Nations in New York, the Commission of the European Union in Brussels, the UK House of Lords, and elsewhere. She is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of Europol’s Counter-terrorism Centre and a member of the Editorial Board of Terrorism and Political Violence.
Degrees include: BA (Legal Science, Sociology & Politics), National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG), 1997; MA (International Relations), University of Limerick (UL), 1998; PhD (Political Science) Trinity College Dublin (TCD), 2006.
Prof. Yvonne Daly
Yvonne Daly BCL (University College Cork) PhD (Trinity College Dublin) is Professor of Criminal Law and Evidence in the School of Law and Government at DCU. She is an expert on criminal evidence and procedure, with a specific research focus on effective criminal defence and the legal regulation of criminal investigations. Yvonne engages in doctrinal, comparative, and empirical research which explores the law in action. Her research advocates for the practical and effective protection of individual rights, specifically in relation to suspects under criminal investigation.
Yvonne led the Irish project team on the EU-funded SUPRALAT project, which developed and delivered training for criminal defence lawyers on representing suspects detained for police questioning, along with colleagues at Maastricht University, Antwerp University, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, and PLOT Belgium.
She was also the Principal Investigator for Ireland on another EU-funded project - EmpRiSe - which examined the operation of the pre-trial right to silence in Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. Yvonne and her team worked on this project with colleagues at Maastricht University, the University of Antwerp and KU Leuven.
Yvonne is currently Vice-Chair of a COST Action (ImpleMéndez) focused on the implementation of the Mendez Principles on Effective Interviewing for Investigations and Information-Gathering. She is co-author of Criminal Defence Representation at Garda Stations (Bloomsbury 2023) and editor of Police Custody in Ireland (Routledge 2024).
Dr Brenda Daly
Dr Brenda Daly is an Associate Professor of Law in the School of Law and Government at DCU, where she lectures and researches dispute resolution, employment law, and healthcare law.
Her research interests include mediation and conflict resolution. Dr Daly was the co-Principal Investigator of an Irish Research Council of the Humanities and Social Sciences/Department of Foreign Affairs Conflict Resolution Unit funded project that examined the capacity of the EU as an international peace mediator (2009-2010) and the effectiveness of mediation as a conflict resolution tool.
Dr Shelley Deane
Dr Shelley Deane is a researcher in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University (DCU). She is also co-editor of the journal Irish Studies in International Affairs, and works on the Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South (ARINS) project. She was previously a GOAL Board member; Assistant Professor of Government, Bowdoin College; Assistant Professor of International Relations, Dartmouth College. Shelley has research, practitioner, and field experience in the area of peacebuilding, fragile states, social cohesion and social integration, conflict emergencies, refugees, humanitarian education, emergency risk strategy provision, crisis and emergency mapping, training, monitoring and evaluation assessments in Ireland north and south and the Middle East.
She holds a PhD in political science from the London School of Economics; an MA in International Relations (Security Studies), University of Warwick; and a BSocSci Social Anthropology, University of Manchester.
Prof. John Doyle
Professor John Doyle is Vice President for Research in DCU and Professor of International Conflict Resolution.
His recent publications have focused on the consequences of the decision by the UK to leave the European Union, for the Northern Ireland peace process and for the political future of the island of Ireland. He is Editor of Irish Studies in International Affairs, and academic commissioning editor for the ARINS project, a non-partisan evidence-based research initiative involving the Royal Irish Academy and the University of Notre Dame, that is exploring policy options for Ireland’s constitutional, political and socio-economic future, in the run up to a possible referendum on the creation of a united Ireland.
John has led large scale, EU-funded studies of comparative peace processes, focused on Europe, South Asia and the post-Soviet region. He has been a visiting professor in conflict resolution in India, at the Nelson Mandela Centre in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and in Pakistan, in the School of Social Sciences at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).
Prof. Doyle has published in the Journal of Common Market Studies, International Peacekeeping, European Journal of Legal Studies, and Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A: Statistics in Society. He has edited or co-edited collections such as the Routledge Handbook of State Recognition, Peace, Security and Defence Cooperation in Post-Brexit Europe, and Policing the Narrow Ground: lessons from the transformation of policing in Northern Ireland.
Dr James Fitzgerald
Dr James Fitzgerald is Associate Professor in Security Studies at the School of Law and Government and Founding Director of the Erasmus Mundus International Master in Intelligence and Strategic Studies (IMSISS), the University's first Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree (EMJMD).
Previously co-convenor of the BISA Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group (2013-2017), he specialises in applying political theory to dynamics of terrorism and political violence (and vice-versa). He is variously published in top-ranking journals, including Critical Studies on Terrorism and First Monday and his current research (and teaching) focuses on conspiracy-led violent extremism, conspiracism and “post-truth” politics and conspiracy and disinformation in the context of the 2022 Brazilian Presidential elections.
He has accepted visiting scholarships at a number of prestigious institutions, including Columbia University and Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). He currently sits on the Editorial Board of Critical Studies on Terrorism, the leading journal in his field.
Dr Fitzgerald has a strong track record of attracting international research funding, standing at €7.37 million to date and is a leading member of a number of research networks, including the VOX-Pol Network of Excellence for the Study of Violent Online Political Extremism, the Jean Monet Network of Excellence for EU Counterterrorism (EUCTER) and the NetLab Internet and Social Media Studies Laboratory.
Dr Fitzgerald is published in various public media, including in leading Irish newspapers, The Irish Times and the Business Post. He has written for wider audiences in the form of invited contributions and blogposts and has contributed to notable media outlets on matters of terrorism and security, including BBC News, National Geographic, Politken and The New Yorker.
Dr Andrew Forde
Dr Andrew Forde is Assistant Professor in Law at the School of Law and Government. His research is situated at the intersection of law, politics and public policy, focused primarily on human rights protection in areas of conflict and political contestation. He is a Commissioner on the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) and worked for more than 10 years with the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as Human Rights Advisor to the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights and Political Advisor with a particular focus on conflict-affected regions in Europe. He has served as a senior official in the Irish Government for the past six years. His first book, European Human Rights Grey Zones - The Council of Europe and Areas of Conflict, was published in April 2024 by Cambridge University Press and his second, co-authored book on Russia's relationship with the Council of Europe and the European human rights system is due for publication early in 2025.
Dr James Gallen
Dr James Gallen is an associate professor in the School of Law and Government at DCU. His research interests include human rights, international law and legal and transitional justice.
His present research agenda and recent publications concern a transitional justice approach to historical abuse in consolidated democracies and in Christian churches.
His first monograph, Transitional Justice and the Historical Abuses of Church and State, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023 and is available free as a gold open access title.
Dr Niamh Gaynor
Dr Niamh Gaynor is Associate Professor in DCU's School of Law and Government. Her research interests include the international political economy of development, genders and development, and participation and democracy, in Ireland and sub-Saharan Africa.
Niamh has conducted field research in a wide range of African countries as well as in Ireland, collaborating with NGOs and public agencies in this research. She is the author of over 50 scholarly articles, chapters, reports and books and her research has appeared in, among others, Third World Quarterly, Review of African Political Economy, Journal of International Development, and Politics and Society. Her recent books Engendering Democracy in Africa: Women, Politics and Development (Routledge, 2022) and Global Education in Ireland: Critical Histories and Future Directions (co-edited and published by Bloomsbury, 2024) are both available through Open Access.
Niamh holds a PhD in Sociology (Maynooth University), an MSc in Rural Development (UCD), a postgraduate diploma in Development Management (Open University), and a BSc in Botany and Mathematics (UCD).
Prior to working in DCU, Niamh lived for three years in Benin, West Africa where she worked on a GIZ (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) natural resource management project, as well as with a number of development agencies and NGOs conducting field research and project evaluations in Africa and Central Europe. In 2004, she was awarded an IRC (Irish Research Council) PhD scholarship and she completed her PhD in 2008. She has worked in DCU since 2008.
Dr S. Harikrishnan
Dr S Harikrishnan is a researcher and photographer based in Dublin, and writes on politics and culture. He is the author of Social Spaces and the Public Sphere: A Spatial History of Modernity in Kerala, and a co-editor of Ala, a blog on Kerala. He completed his PhD at DCU.
Prof. Christian Kaunert
Prof Dr Christian Kaunert is Professor of International Security at DCU. He has also been Professor of Policing and Security, as well as Director of the International Centre for Policing and Security at the University of South Wales. In addition, he is Jean Monnet Chair, Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence and Director of the Jean Monnet Network on EU Counter-Terrorism (www.eucter.net). Previously, he served as Academic Director and Professor at the Institute for European Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, a Professor of International Politics, Head of Discipline in Politics, and the Director of the European Institute for Security and Justice, a Jean Monnet Centre for Excellence, at the University of Dundee. Christian has been an invited expert for the European Institute for Public Administration (EIPA), the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the European Parliament, the European Union Institute for Security Studies (an agency of the EU), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Over his career, he has been awarded nine prestigious Marie Curie Fellowships, five Jean Monnet Chairs, and, finally, three Jean Monnet Centres of Excellence, as well as one Jean Monnet Network of Excellence ‘EUCTER’, and one Jean Monnet TT EUACADEMY. Additionally, he was awarded a large Horizon 2020 research grant on Terrorist Radicalisation processes – Mindb4Act, as well as a large Marie Curie Doctoral Training Network EUGLOCTER.
Dr David Keane
Dr David Keane is Assistant Professor in Law at the School of Law and Government, DCU. His research is in public international law, with a particular focus on the UN human rights treaties, notably the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. He has published four books and around 40 journal articles and book chapters in this area, including the prize-winning Caste-based Discrimination in International Human Rights Law (Routledge 2008), and 50 Years of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Manchester University Press, 2018). His current work is on inter-state cases and dispute resolution, with recent journal articles in International Human Rights Law Review, the Melbourne Journal of International Law and The Law and Practice of International Courts & Tribunals. He holds a BCL (Law and French) from University College Cork, Ireland, and an LLM and PhD from the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway, where he was a recipient of a Government of Ireland scholarship. Dr Keane acts also as a visiting professor at the University of Bordeaux, France.
Alamgir Khan
Alamgir Khan is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Law and Governance at Dublin City University. Dr Khan completed his PhD at the University of Dundee, Scotland, UK in 2021. His thesis ‘A Critical Study of Pakistan’s Counterinsurgency Strategy in the Tribal Areas (2001-2014)’ involved the critical evaluation of Pakistan’s policies to deal with insurgency in tribal areas in the light of counterinsurgency theories. During his PhD, he was also involved in teaching different modules in the School of Politics and IR, University of Dundee.
Before joining DCU, Dr Khan worked as an Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science and IR at the University of Swabi, Pakistan.
Dr Maria Loftus
Dr Maria Loftus is an Assistant Professor in French in the School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies. She holds a primary degree in Irish and French with higher degrees in French Literature and Language, Discourse and Representations, Applied Linguistics and a PhD in Sub-Saharan Documentary Cinema from French and Irish universities. Having published in international journals in the areas of protest and documentary cinema and visual representations of colonisation, she has also explored the Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) field of students as creators of video content within an SLA context.
More recently, her published work is centred at the nexus of creative outputs and intercultural dialogue.
Dr Tetyana Lokot
Tetyana Lokot is Associate Professor in Digital Media and Society at the School of Communications, and Programme Chair of the MA in Social Media Communications. A native of Ukraine, she researches threats to digital rights, networked authoritarianism, digital resistance, internet freedom and internet governance in Eastern Europe. She is the author of Beyond the Protest Square: Digital Media and Augmented Dissent (2021), an in-depth study of protest and digital media in Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity.
She is currently PI on the Horizon 2020 project MEDIATIZED EU (H2020-SC6-TRANSFORMATIONS-2020 GA no: 101004534). In 2022, she was a SSSHARC Fellow at the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre, University of Sydney, Australia. In 2023, she was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies in Bochum, Germany.
Lokot's research has been published in Information, Communication & Society; Social Media + Society; Digital Journalism; Internet Policy Review; Surveillance & Society; Misinformation Review; Irish Studies in International Affairs; Partecipazione et Conflitto; Media and Communication; Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies; Post-Soviet Affairs; and Journal of International Relations & Development.
She has presented her research at top international conferences, including ICA, AoIR, IAMCR and ECREA. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and The Irish Independent. She frequently contributes expert commentary to Wired, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Bloomberg.
Dr Agnès Maillot
Dr Agnès Maillot is Associate Professor in the School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University. Her main area of research is the conflict in Northern Ireland, and more particularly Sinn Féin and the IRA, on which she has published many books and articles.
She also works on post-conflict politics, covering areas such as victims and reconciliation, and the legacy of violence. She also researches contemporary Irish society, as well as multiculturalism in France and Ireland, and is currently working on issues of asylum seekers in the French and Irish contexts.
Philip McDonagh
Philip McDonagh is Adjunct Professor at DCU and Director of the Centre for Religion, Human Values, and International Relations. As an Irish diplomat, Philip was involved in the process leading up to the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and later served as ambassador in a number of postings including India and the Russian Federation. Philip is co-author of On the Significance of Religion for Global Diplomacy (Routledge 2021). Philip’s volumes of poetry include The Song the Oriole Sang (Dedalus 2010).
Dr Ken McDonagh
Kenneth McDonagh is Associate Professor in International Relations in the School of Law and Government. He was Head of School from 2021-2024 and the Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences from 2019-2021. His research is focused on EU Foreign Policy and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), the role of small states in CSDP, Ireland's security and defence policy, and the gendered impact of CSDP missions. He has published on the EU as a global actor, the gendered impact of CSDP missions and contributed to policy papers and training activities in the area of Women, Peace and Security and CSDP. He was Principal Investigator of the H2020-MCSA-ITN Global India which aimed to train a new generation of experts on EU-India relations and empower them with the skills and expertise to contribute to the EU’s engagement with India. Previously, he was PI of an Irish Research Council funded project on the gendered impact of CSDP missions in the Western Balkans which produced training material and policy reports aimed at the European External Action Service and other stakeholders. Dr McDonagh has over a decade of teaching experience in EU and International Relations at Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels.
Dr Miraji H. Mohamed
Dr Miraji H. Mohamed is a postdoctoral researcher in the Tech Against Terrorism Europe Project at DCU School of Law and Government. She works at the intersection of conflict analysis, peace studies and youth studies. In particular, the conceptualizations of ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ and the impact they have on the Youth, Peace and Security agenda, and security interventions more broadly. She obtained her PhD in Politics and International Relations from Dublin City University. Her research explores the gendered dimensions of (online) extremism and countering violent extremism, emerging discourses of ‘radicalisation’, and alternative forms of preventing and countering violent extremism. Her work has been published in the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies and the Media, War & Conflict journal. As a postdoctoral researcher at DCU School of Law & Government, she taught a module on gender and politics to DCU's undergraduate students. She is an affiliate at the Cyber Threats Research Centre (CYTREC) of Swansea University and the VOX-Pol Network of Excellence.
Her research interests are in extremism and the new media, gender and extremism, critical discourse analysis, content analysis, preventing/countering violent extremism, radicalisation, youth, peace and security and gendered media representations of extremism and preventing violent extremism.
Prof. Gary Murphy
Gary Murphy is Professor of Politics at the School of Law and Government at DCU and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, widely considered to be Ireland’s highest academic honour. He is an acknowledged authority internationally on the subject of political lobbying and an expert in the reconstruction and interpretation of Irish politics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
His work has received considerable external recognition He was visiting Fulbright Professor of Politics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a Naughton Fellow and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Irish Studies at the Keough Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
He has advised Irish governments on issues ranging from the regulation of lobbying to electoral integrity. He is a former President of the Political Studies Association of Ireland, and a former editor of the association’s journal Irish Political Studies.
He has published extensively on modern Irish politics and regularly appears in the print and broadcast media. Among his recent books are Electoral Competition in Ireland since 1987: The Politics of Triumph and Despair (Manchester, 2016), Regulating Lobbying: A Global Comparison (2nd edition, Manchester, 2019), and most recently the definitive and best-selling biography of the former Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fáil, Charles Haughey (Dublin: Gill, 2021).
Dr Fiona Murphy
Fiona Murphy is an anthropologist based in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS) at DCU. As an anthropologist of forced displacement, she works with Stolen Generations in Australia and people seeking asylum and refuge in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Turkey. She is chair of the MA in Refugee Integration. She has a particular passion for creative and public anthropologies and is always interested in experimenting with new forms and genres. You can watch her TEDx talk on forced displacement here.
Prof. Donnacha Ó Beacháin
Donnacha Ó Beacháin is Professor of Politics at the School of Law and Government, DCU, where he lectures on post-Soviet politics, unrecognised states, Irish politics and foreign policy. He has conducted research in all 15 post-Soviet states and in each of the protracted conflict zones, including 10 years living and working in Central Asia, the South Caucasus and Moldova.
Professor Ó Beacháin has helped create strong institutional links between Irish academia and major universities across the globe. He has twice been awarded the accolade “Champion of European Research” by Ireland’s National Research Support Network. In May 2022, Professor Ó Beacháin was awarded the President’s Research Award by DCU for his contribution to the humanities and social sciences.
Professor Ó Beacháin is the author and editor of several books including The Colour Revolutions in the Former Soviet Republics and Life in Post-Communist Eastern Europe after EU Membership. His monograph From Partition to Brexit: The Irish Government and Northern Ireland is the recipient of the book of the year award from the Political Studies Association of Ireland. Professor Ó Beacháin’s book devoted to Russia’s war against Ukraine will be published in Spring 2025 by Agenda and he is under contract with Routledge to produce a monograph devoted to domestic politics in post-Soviet unrecognised states. He is a frequent commentator in the national and international media.
Dr Gerry O’Reilly
Dr Gerry O'Reilly is Associate Professor in Geography, and International Coordinator for the School of History and Geography, with research and teaching interests in geopolitics, political, economic and cultural geography, sustainable development and education. Modules include: Geopolitics and Humanitarian Action; Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Europe and Spaces of Memory. He obtained his PhD from Durham University, MA from the National University of Ireland (University College Cork), HDipEd and BA, Maynooth University. Post-doctoral research was undertaken in political geography and sustainable development at University College Dublin. Before joining SPC - DCU in 1997, Gerry held lectureship and research posts at UCD, and the Universities of Durham, Tunis, and Algeria-Annaba, as well as holding a Visiting Professorship at the Ohio State University, Columbus. Regarding Humanitarian Action and Geopolitics and as a Faculty member of ECHO (EU Humanitarian Office) - sponsored NOHA (Network on Humanitarian Action), he was Erasmus Mundus Visiting Fellow at the Western Cape University (2009), Toronto York University (2008) and Columbia University NY (2007).
Gerry is Vice-President of EUROGEO - EAG (European Association of Geographers); and International Geographical Union, National Representative for the Commission on Population and Vulnerability. Representative for L'Association Comenius and NETT that operate within the EU LLP/ERASMUS framework. Representative on the National Steering Committee of the CGDE: Centre for Global Development through Education (MI-UL); and CHRCE - Centre for Human Rights and Citizenship Education.
Dr Roman-Gabriel Olar
Roman-Gabriel Olar is an Assistant Professor in the School of Law and Government at DCU. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin. He received his PhD from the Department of Government at the University of Essex. He is also a Research Fellow at the Michael Nicholson Centre for Conflict and Cooperation, University of Essex. Between 2014 and 2018, he was a member of the Research School on Peace and Conflict at Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).
His research focuses on the politics of authoritarian regimes, democratisation, legacies of conflict, and state repression.
Ardit Orana
Ardit Orana is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Research Fellow, who is part of the EU-GLOCTER Doctoral Network. His research project is entitled ‘Supranationalism in EU Counter-Terrorism’.
Ardit has previously worked with the government of Kosovo, international organisations such as OSCE and various civil society organisations and think tanks based in Kosovo. His experience includes supporting governmental and non-governmental organisations design R&R, P/CVE and CT strategies, youth empowerment, as well as gender-mainstreaming strategies. He has supported various initiatives aimed at policy development at the level of the Kosovo government including national P/CVE programming, EU legislative approximation, and reform of internal European integration mechanisms.
In the framework of the EU’s Horizon and ISF Programmes, he engaged in various projects such as PAVE, DRIVE and DRad, Ardit has authored and co-authored numerous reports on the topics of (de)radicalization, violent extremism, disengagement, rehabilitation and reintegration of FTFS, EU integration, electoral system reform, public administration reform and enhancing gender-mainstreaming at the local and central legislative levels.
Dr Markus Pauli
Dr Markus Pauli is Assistant Professor in Political Science in DCU School of Law and Government. He has held positions in the Political Science Department at the National University of Singapore, Yale-NUS, Singapore Management University, and Heidelberg University, Germany.
His current research focuses on (i) the international political economy of climate change and decarbonization in Asia and Europe, (ii) statecraft, sustainable development, and microfinance in India, (iii) collaborative governance for the SDGs, (iv) perceptions of global governance using survey experiments.
Markus held a Rising Talent Fellowship at DCU and received scholarships for his PhD research from the Cluster of Excellence Asia and Europe in a Global Context at Heidelberg University, and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Markus studied at the Free University, Berlin, and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
He has co-authored work on India’s democracy, socio-economic development, citizenship, human security, financial inclusion, and collaborative governance for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). His co-authored book (with Subrata K. Mitra and Jivanta Schottli) is Statecraft and Foreign Policy: India 1947-2023 (Dublin City University Press).
Alexander Price
Alexander Price is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Research Fellow as part of the EU-GLOCTER Doctoral Network. His research project is entitled ‘EU Counter-Terrorism, Hybrid Warfare, and Radicalisation’. He has Master’s degrees in Global and Area Studies (St. Antony's College, Oxford) and Global Security Studies (Johns Hopkins), a Master of Divinity (Harvard), and a BA in Classical Studies (Columbia). He is originally from Houston, Texas, USA.
Dr Abel Polese
Dr Abel Polese's main focus is governance, with special attention to informal governance and theory of informality, in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He is the PI of several projects at DCU including MSCA-DN Post-pandemic resilient communities: is the informal economy a reservoir for the next generation of digitalized and green businesses in the Global South? He is also an advocate of open science and reform in assessing academic excellence. An alumnus of the Global Young Academy (and leader of the working group on academic excellence and open science), he is the author of The SCOPUS Diaries and the (il)logics of Academic Survival: A Short Guide to Design Your Own Strategy and Survive Bibliometrics, Conferences, and Unreal Expectations in Academia. The book has been published in English, Spanish, Russian and Kyrgyz and has become a primary resource in career-related trainings for young scholars.
Dr Paola Rivetti
Dr Paola Rivetti is Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at the School of Law and Government. She researches the government of societies and polities in the Middle East and North Africa from a comparative perspective; social and political mobilisations; gender and politics. She is author of Political Participation in Iran from Khatami to the Green Movement (2020), which she presented in numerous universities across Europe, North America and the Middle East; and co-editor of Islamists and the Politics of the Arab Uprisings: Governance, Pluralisation and Contention (2018), We've Come A Long Way. Reproductive Rights of Migrants and Ethnic Minorities in Ireland (2018), Continuity and Change Before and After the Arab Uprisings. Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt (2015) and Effetto società civile. Pratiche e retoriche in Iran, Libano, Egitto e Marocco (2010). She has published in the most important peer-reviewed journals, contributes to public debates and is involved in a number of cultural and professional initiatives
Dr Janine Silga
Dr Janine Silga is an Assistant Professor in European Union Law at the School of Law and Government at DCU. Prior to that, she held postdoctoral positions at the University of Luxembourg and at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy). She completed her PhD in Law at the European University Institute of Florence (Italy). Her doctoral research dealt with the legal dimension of the migration-development nexus in the European Union policy framework. Her research focuses on EU migration law and policy, and on the EU development policy. She has also done substantial research on human rights in connection to both migration and asylum. In addition to her academic activities, she has worked with several institutions, including non-governmental organisations.
Her most recent publications include: ‘The ambiguity of the European Union policy discourse on the Migration and Development Nexus: Perpetuating the Colonial Legacy?’ published in UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs (Spring 2020) and ‘La Protection de la Victime Contre la Haine Raciale: Le Point de Vue de la Victime’ (translation and commentary of Mari Matsuda’s article: ‘Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim's Story’), in H. Bentouhami and M. Möschel (eds.), Critical Race Theory: une introduction aux grands textes fondateurs (Dalloz, 2017). Her ongoing research projects include: The Migration-Development Nexus in the European Union Policy Framework – A Legal Perspective (Cambridge University Press, under contract) and 'Migration, Asylum and EU Anti-Discrimination Law', in O' Cinneide, Colm; Ringelheim, Julie; Solanke, Iyiola (eds.), Edward Elgar Research Handbook on European Anti-Discrimination Law.
Dr Gëzim Visoka
Dr Gëzim Visoka is the Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies in the School of Law and Government at DCU. Dr Visoka is a leading international scholar on statehood and state recognition, and post-conflict peacebuilding and statebuilding. His research focuses on the making, remaking, and unmaking of states and peace processes in contemporary world politics. He is the author and editor of 12 published books, over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles, and over 25 book chapters published with leading university presses and global academic publishers. Among his published works are: The Derecognition of States (2024); The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation (with Oliver P. Richmond, 2021), Normalization in World Politics (with Nicolas Lemay-Hébert, 2021); and Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Peace and Conflict Studies (with Oliver P. Richmond, 2021). His work has been published in leading international peer-reviewed journals, such as: Nature, International Affairs, European Journal of International Relations, Journal of Common Market Studies; Geopolitics; Review of International Studies; Cooperation and Conflict; International Studies Review; Foreign Policy Analysis; International Peacekeeping; and Civil Wars. Dr Visoka is the founding Editor of Routledge Studies in Statehood (Taylor & Francis), and Co-Editor of Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies (Palgrave) together with Oliver P. Richmond and Annika Björkdahl). In addition to his academic activity, Dr Visoka has over 20 years of experience working with civil society groups and policy consultancy in post-conflict societies.
His research interests include peace and conflict studies, peacebuilding, critical theory and global governance, recognition of states, foreign policy of small states, Kosovo, Western Balkans.
Dr Eleanor Williams
Dr Eleanor Williams is an Assistant Professor in Security at DCU. Her research currently considers the role of British and Irish civil servants during the peace process in Northern Ireland. Prior to joining DCU she was a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. There she was part of the Quill Project research team which uses the Quill software to understand negotiated text in a systematic manner. Her PhD research, which was undertaken at Queen's University Belfast, focused on the ethics of state intelligence during the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Colombia. Eleanor is a board member of the Women's Intelligence Network and the ECPR Standing Group on Political Violence.
PhD Students
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson is a former Detective Superintendent in An Garda Síochána (Ireland's Police Service) having completed 32 years in mainstream and specialist policing. For much of his career Michael held a senior command role in the areas of police specialist firearms response, crisis negotiation, and VIP protection, and is a veteran of hundreds of police operations. Michael has trained with many international law enforcement agencies, including the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team; the Metropolitan Police's specialist firearms unit; and specialist units from Germany and other European countries. Michael has also supported the Department of Foreign Affairs, with many overseas deployments including safety and security reviews, kidnap response, and citizen evacuation.
On a training and academic level, Michael completed his BA in Police Management through the Garda College and the University of Limerick in 2008. In 2012, Michael graduated with honours, having successfully completed prestigious FBI's National Academy program for law enforcement leaders. In 2014, Michael successfully completed his MA in International Relations at DCU, attaining first class honours. For many years, Michael was the course director of the Garda Crisis Incident Management program, training police commanders and crisis negotiators in incident management.
Following retirement from An Garda Síochána, Michael operated as a security advisor for an international humanitarian organisation, and subsequently as a personal security advisor in the corporate sector, before commencing his PhD in September 2023.
Rudinë Jakupi
Rudinë Jakupi is a PhD student at DCU School of Law and Government researching the intersection of gender and security within international organisations and post-conflict contexts. More specifically, Rudinë studies the integration and diffusion of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Agenda within military institutions, specifically NATO and the Kosovo Security Force (KSF). Her professional background includes substantive work with civil society organisations in Kosovo, where she conducted research primarily focused on security studies and counterterrorism. During this period, she authored several reports. More recently, her tenure as a security policy advisor at the Dutch Embassy in Prishtina, Kosovo, saw her engaging in various policy areas, including anti-terrorism, migration, small arms and light weapons, cybersecurity, and the enhancement of overall regional stability.
She is a Swedish Institute Alumna with a Master's degree in international relations from Linköping University (Sweden) and a Bachelor's in political science from the University of Prishtina (Kosovo).
Nithya Kothenmaril
Nithya Kothenmaril is a doctoral candidate at the School of Law and Government at DCU. She is the recipient of the Irish Research Council’s postgraduate scholarship for her research, which focuses on the political participation of Dalit women in local self-government institutions in Kerala, India.
Nithya has extensive experience working with women involved in community-level interventions, such as Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA), Kudumbashree, and Anganwadi.
She holds a Master of Philosophy in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (India). Additionally, she has a Master’s degree in Social Work from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam (India), and a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Calicut University, Kerala (India). Prior to her M.Phil. degree, she worked as a research officer at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India. Her research interests include caste, gender, and political participation in India.
Ricardo Pereira
Ricardo Pereira is a PhD student in Law and Government at DCU. Ricardo served as a data coder for the project "EXCEPTIUS Exceptional Powers in Times of Sars-CoV-2 Crisis" between 2021 and 2022. From 2022 to 2023, he was enrolled in the project "The Arms Race in the Middle East" as a research assistant at the Research Center in Political Science (CICP) at the University of Minho (Portugal). Additionally, he has showcased his work by presenting at various universities, including the University of Lisbon, the State University of Rio de Janeiro, and Pompeu Fabra University. His publications can be found in journals such as Small Wars & Insurgencies. Ricardo's research has primarily revolved around diverse topics, such as private security companies, EU health security, and securitisation studies.
Denise Ripamonti
Denise Ripamonti is a PhD candidate at the DCU Conflict Institute, specialising in conflict and critical security studies and with regional expertise in South Asia. Her research interests focus on the dynamics of armed conflicts and political violence, non-state armed groups, and the interactions between law, armed conflict, and society. In her doctoral research, she explores the use of security legislation in the state’s response to protracted armed conflicts over land rights, governance, and environmental resources in central-eastern India, with particular attention to the implications for conflict resolution processes and practices. She was an Irish Research Council (IRC) Postgraduate Fellow in 2019–2021.
Denise holds a BA in Linguistic and Cultural Mediation and an MA in Languages, Cultures, and International Communication from the University of Milan and an MPhil in International Studies from Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi.
Asma Yaqoob
Asma Yaqoob a PhD candidate at the School of Law and Government at DCU. Her research focuses on women's political vulnerabilities in climate disasters. She is investigating the floods of 2022 in Pakistan that devastated millions of people with disproportionate impacts on women and young girls. Her research is primarily based on the intersection of environmental stressors, structural inequalities, and broader political processes, which leads to gender inequalities in flood governance at the household and street levels.
She began her career as a researcher and writer on issues of regional politics, from the perspective of cross-boundary water conflicts in South Asia. At DCU, she has developed her interest in researching the intersection of environmental injustices with the everyday lives of women in the process of urbanisation of nature.
Research Fellows
Dr Fabrizio Leonardo Cuccu
Dr Fabrizio Leonardo Cuccu obtained his PhD in Politics and International Relations in 2023 from DCU, where he also served as Assistant Professor. His diverse academic journey has taken him through Italy, Ireland, Morocco, and Tunisia. His research expertise lies in critical development and security studies, with a focus on the North African region. He employs a decolonial lens, integrating critical discourse analysis of international development documents with “vernacular” and “everyday” approaches, to explore the evolution of development programmes in postcolonial contexts. His work has been published in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs and L’année du Maghreb. He is currently working on his first monograph for Routledge.
Dr. Moign Khawaja
Moinuddin (Moign) Khawaja is a teaching fellow and a researcher at the School of Law and Government, DCU. He successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Acting Like a State: Visual Analysis of IS's (Staged) Performances of Modern Stateness” in September 2022. Moign teaches modules related to security studies and international relations such as conflict, peace, security, intelligence, foreign policy, diplomacy, and migration to undergraduate and postgraduate students. Dr Moign Khawaja is also the co-author with Prof Christian Kaunert of the book entitled Islamic State, Media and Propaganda - Performances of the Visual Caliphate (Edward Elgar Publishers, 2025, available on open access).
He has an extensive background in international relations, world conflicts and journalism and has been a keen observer of Middle Eastern affairs over the last two decades. He has worked as a multimedia journalist in the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, and the Sultanate of Oman.