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Understanding Violent Conflict
Social Science Research Council

Prof. Dr. Tatiana Carayannis

Tatiana Carayannis is director of the SSRC’s Understanding Violent Conflict (UVC) program and director of the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum (CPPF). She also has a visiting appointment at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Africa Centre and Department of International Development. Carayannis leads the Council’s China-Africa Knowledge Project, convenes the DRC Affinity Group, a small brain trust of leading Congo scholars and analysts, and is a research director of two international research collaborations: the Conflict Research Programme and the Centre for Public Authority and International Development (CPAID) based at the LSE. A scholar of UN peace operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Central Africa more generally, her current research focuses on war networks and the shaping of public authority in Central Africa, and the impact of interventions for justice and security on local communities, including those displaced. A seasoned researcher, Carayannis has written widely on political mobilization, rebel governance (the MLC rebel movement in particular), global-local dynamics of violence, international justice, democratic processes and elections, UN peacekeeping and preventive diplomacy, and on the agenda-setting role of UN human rights and development ideas. She is frequently invited for press interviews. Before joining the SSRC, she directed a research and publication program on the intellectual history of the United Nations at The City University of New York’s Ralph Bunche Institute for International Affairs. In 1998, she served as rapporteur for the UN secretary-general’s Resource Group on the DRC. Her first book (coauthored) is UN Voices: The Struggle for Development and Social Justice (Indiana University Press, 2005) and her second (coedited) is Making Sense of the Central African Republic (Zed Books, 2015). She is currently completing two book projects:  Pioneers of Peacekeeping: ONUC 1960–1964; Anatomy of Rebellion: JP Bemba and the Mouvement de Liberation du Congo. Both are scheduled for publication in 2019-2020. A fifth book, The Third UN (with Thomas G. Weiss) is currently in the early stages. She holds a PhD in political science (international relations and comparative politics) from The City University of New York Graduate Center, and an MA in political science from New York University. She was a USIP Jennings Randolph Fellow and Mellon Fellow for Security and Humanitarian Action and has lectured at The City University of NY, the University of Edinburgh, Columbia University, and Adelphi University. Carayannis is fluent in French and Greek, grew up in Central and West Africa, and travels frequently to the region.

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