Emma Elfversson

Short presentation

I am Associate Professor (Docent) and work on issues spanning development studies, comparative politics and peace research. I currently lead a large research project exploring The Continuation of Conflict-related Violence in Postwar Cities. Other current research investigates the politics of forced evictions, community policing in urban and rural areas (focusing on Kenya), land rights and climate resilience strategies (Kenya), and the social networks of urban mediators (Liberia).

Keywords

• conflict research
• conflict resolution
• mediation
• communal conflict
• kenya
• africa
• urban violence
• development studies
• sustainable development
• indigeneity ethnicity and nationalism
• comparative politics
• urban governance
• community policing
• ethnic politics

Biography

I am Associate Professor (Docent) in peace and conflict research, and hold a Ph.D. (2017) and a Politices Magister degree (2008) from Uppsala University. My doctoral thesis, Central Politics and Local Peacemaking: The Conditions for Peace after Communal Conflict (2017) is available here. Prior to my Ph.D. studies, I worked for two years as a research assistant with the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP).

Teaching

I teach courses within Development Studies, as well as Quantitative Methods on the MSSc program at the department of government. I have extensive experience as as thesis supervisor at Bachelor and MSSc level. I am assistant supervisor to PhD candidates Marcellina Priadi and Lisa Svenhard. I have previously taught courses such as International Conflict Resolution, Advanced Qualitative Methods, and Reviewing a Research Field at the department of peace and conflict research.

Service to the profession

I currently serve as Director of the Swedish Development Research Network (SweDev). I have held a number of other positions of trust at Uppsala University, including vice chairperson in the Student Union's Doctoral Board; the presidium of the Academic Senate; chairperson of the PhD council at the faculty of social sciences; a member of the social sciences faculty board; teacher representative to the board at DPCR; and a member of the Martin H:son Holmdahl scholarship committee.

Research

My research interests lie at the intersection of peace and conflict research, development studies, and comparative politics. More specifically, my ongoing and recent research concerns ethnic politics and communal violence, local conflict resolution, community policing, land rights, and urban violence. I am currently conducting research within several collaborative projects:

• The continuation of conflict-related violence in postwar cities: Mapping violence at the street level (the project page is found here). This VR-funded project, of which I am the principal investigator, collects systematic data on conflict-related violence in postwar cities, where events are disaggregated and geocoded at the street level. We use this novel data to advance theoretical and empirical knowledge on patterns and causes of urban postwar violence. To complement quantitative analysis and assess theoretical mechanisms at more depth, we conduct fieldwork in the postwar cities Beirut, Belfast, Mitrovica and Abidjan.
• Urban-rural dynamics of community-based conflict management (project page). The project is funded by Formas and focuses on community policing, a central component in police reforms across the world, and asks how the rural versus urban context impact on community policing as a strategy for conflict management and violence prevention. Empirically, we focus on Kenya, combining quantitative analysis and case studies in rural and urban areas to identify how conditions and dynamics of community policing differ. Some key insights are summed up in this recent blog.
• Strategies of climate resilience: Examining the role of land tenure. This EBA-funded project seeks to increase the understanding of how tenure security shapes resilience strategies, by paying attention to individual- and community-level perceptions and strategies. Combining novel survey and interview data from Kenya, we assess how formal and perceived tenure security affect the different individual and collective strategies people use to decrease their vulnerability to climate change.
• Communities at risk: Mediation as a tool to defuse ethnic tensions in postwar Liberia and beyond. This project, funded by FBA, investigates why some mediators are more popular than others, when it comes to settling inter-ethnic personal disputes. We suggest that most residents prefer to take their inter-ethnic disputes to societal brokers–individuals who possess networks that transcend ethnic cleavages–for arbitration. Empirically, we study the small city Voinjama in postwar Liberia, using social network analysis and ethnographic fieldwork.

More broadly, my research has sought to investigate how processes of urbanization affects electoral and communal violence in cities, and political conditions for local conflict resolution. My doctoral research project analyzed the durable resolution of communal conflict, and the role of the state and non-state actors in resolving such conflicts, focusing on cases in Africa. I investigated the dynamics between local conflict resolution processes and central government strategies, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods. The introduction to the thesis (kappa) is available here. Much of my work on communal conflict is summed up in this short article for The Conversation Africa.

Replication data for quantitative research outputs available at: https://github.com/emmaelfversson