Congratulations Anders Themnér on receiving funding from the Swedish Research Council

Uncivil Students: The Militarization of Student Civil Society as a Threat to Democracy has been awarden 800 tkr from the Swedish Research Council. The project will run from one year starting during 2025.

Anders Themnér, Department of Peace and Conflict Research received funding from the research programme Democracy and Higher Education during 2022-2023 under the worktitle Universities at Risk: Explaining Organized Student Violence at African Universities

What do you plan to focus on in your research over the next few years?

Student activism is often regarded as a cornerstone of democracy. However, at some universities—particularly in the Global South—campuses function more as hotbeds of violence than as democratic nurseries. At these institutions, student civil society organisations (SCSOs)—such as student associations, fraternities, and unions—are often highly militarized, resorting to violence against rival student factions, security forces, or innocent peers. Why does this happen? Why do SCSOs at some universities adopt armed tactics, while others remain committed to peaceful activism? These dynamics remain poorly understood. In the project Uncivil Students: The Militarization of Student Civil Society as a Threat to Democracy, recently funded by the Swedish Research Council, my colleague Ibrahim Bangura from Sierra Leone and I seek to answer these questions. Specifically, we will examine how the interplay between students’ economic vulnerabilities, elite patronage networks, and militarized masculinities fosters violent norms and behaviours within SCSOs. Our research will be based on in-depth fieldwork at four African universities: the University of Liberia and Cuttington University (Liberia), as well as Fourah Bay College and the University of Makeni (Sierra Leone). These institutions offer valuable contrasts in levels of student violence—while the University of Liberia and Fourah Bay College have experienced episodes of violence, Cuttington University and the University of Makeni have largely remained peaceful.

What key insights from your work on Democracy and Higher Education project do you consider particularly important to bring into, or further develop, in your or others´future research?

My participation in the Democracy and Higher Education program has been instrumental in developing my new project. First, with support, I was able to conduct a pilot study on student violence. This was invaluable, as it helped me to refine my conceptual framework for defining and analyzing student violence and develop a codebook later used to systematically collect data on student violence at public universities in Sub-Saharan Africa (2000–2022). This conceptual work and data collection led me to recognize the critical role of military socialization processes, alongside elite co-option, in fueling student violence. It also guided me in selecting Liberia and Sierra Leone as case studies. Second, the researchprogramme provided opportunities to engage with scholars from diverse disciplines, including history, literary studies, and sociology. These interdisciplinary exchanges broadened my theoretical perspectives, encouraging me to think outside the box. For example, I came to appreciate how universities function as both social and physical spaces that hold different meanings for various actors—students, politicians, and local communities alike. I believe that these processes of identity formation influence not only whether students resort to violence, but also the forms that violence takes.