I am Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and direct the Global Insecurities Centre at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS), University of Bristol. I was previously SPAIS Impact Director (2021-2024).

As a postgraduate, I trained in Politics (University of London, 2002) and Social Anthropology (University of Cambridge, 1993). My current research focuses on political violence perpetrated within the confines of civil war and internal armed conflict, and particularly on mass collective violence, its causes and consequences and how it shapes state institutions and societies more broadly speaking. I am also interested in the mechanisms and processes employed by states, societies, collective groups and international actors to overcome political violence. In this regard, my interest is in when, how and why peace negotiations take place and under which conditions transitional justice mechanisms are employed, and what their ultimate consequence might be. I am specifically interested in how survivors and victims shape peacemaking and transitional justice mechanisms and whether their participation might shape the path out of protracted mass violence towards intergroup reconciliation. I work as a scholar, as well as a senior practitioner, including in the past with the United Nations - leading an investigation into the victims' delegations that participated in the 2012-2016 peace talks between President Santos and the FARC-EP guerrilla (Colombia). I worked with the United Nations and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Guatemala, as well as with human rights organisations, such as the Centre for Human Rights legal Action (CALDH), Guatemala. With CALDH, I was part of the original team that prepared the investigation and body of evidence for the trial for genocide and crimes against humanity of former de facto president, General Efrain Rios Montt, in which Rios Montt was convicted for 80 years for said crimes in 2013.

My latest monograph, Victim-Centred Peacemaking: Colombia's Santos-FARC-EP Peace Process will be published by Bristol University Press in 2024. Drawing upon unique and privileged empirical research, which included more than 70 interviews with the members of the delegations and the negotiating parties, the book addresses the participation and role of the victims’ delegations in the Santos-FARC peace negotiations in Colombia, the degree to which the delegations shaped the peace process and the trajectory of the peace deal in the post-agreement scenario. The book builds theory by linking the core themes of inclusion, (re)conciliation, victim-centred peacemaking/transitional justice and peacebuilding, with a focus on social identity theory.

At present, I am working on four projects:

Firstly, from 2021-2024, I led a large ESRC research grant, entitled 'Getting on with it': the Micro-dynamics of Post-Accord Intergroup Relations. As Principal Investigator, I directed the project, which tracked and analysed the strategies and narratives that individuals, groups and communities employ to address and cope with the legacy of political violence and manoeuvre through everyday post-accord life. The project employed multi/mixed methods and a comparative ethnographic approach in order to investigate how civilians in Colombia, Lebanon and Northern Ireland navigate the everyday complexities of life in the wake of egregious violence, exploring whether and, if so, how local agency plays a role in sustaining or undermining peace when formal interventions fail to reach communities, or, if they do, wield little impact. I am leading the development of our research in a series of publications, theorising the micro-dynamics of post-accord intergroup relations. I am also developing a follow-on project that will consolidate our database of hyper-local level agency. 

Secondly, I am working with colleagues at Ohio State University's Mershon Centre for International Security Studies, Deusto University, Philipps-University Marburg and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Colombia) in a project entitled Post-Agreement Reconciliation in Changing Political Eras. This qualitative, interdisciplinary project looks comparatively at how intergroup reconciliation has evolved in the wake of formal episodes of political violence and their closure in the Basque Country, Colombia and Northern Ireland. The research focuses on two inter-connected axes of reconciliation - vertical and horizontal processes – to analyse whether the (re)building of mutually respectful relationships, reparations of harms, and the re-negotiation of a new, shared social, institutional, and political reality is taking/has taken place. The project aims to build theory on conflict transformation and reconciliation.

Thirdly, I have recently co-founded the Journal of Disappearance Studies (Bristol University Press, 2025) and will be one of the journal's founding editors. This project has emerged out of a collective endeavour with colleagues from the University of Bath, the University of Notre Dame, Queen's University Belfast and Tampere University. With colleagues at these institutions, we are carrying out a series of specific research projects to contribute to the development of the new sub-discipline in Disappearance Studies. 

Fourthly, I am part of an interdisciplinary University of Bristol research team working on the prevention of serious violence. The team has recently received a grant to develop research and policy engagement on the theme of Developing a hyper-local understanding of violence, alongside the Bristol Violence Reduction Partnership. 

I collaborate closely with the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies (University of Notre Dame) on the themes of political violence and transitional justice, where I was a Visiting Fellow (academic year, 2022-2023). I am involved in the Kroc’s Legacy Project, which supports research on the Colombian Truth Commission.

I am also an International Programme Affiliate of the Conflict, Resilience and Health Programme, in the Jackson School of Global Affairs, at Yale University.

I work with the charity Never Such Innocence as a member of their Board of Advisors. NSI was established in 2014 with the aim of giving children and young people a voice on violent conflict and to shape national policy and international humanitarian law relative to young people and conflict (www.neversuchinnocence.com).