In this event, Dr. Annette Idler shares key findings from the interdisciplinary Global Security Programme (GSP) at the University of Oxford. The research addresses how to enhance global security at the convergence of armed conflict and the global illicit economy, including during transitions from war to peace. She discusses how the spatial distribution of illicit economic cross-border flows influences the interactions among violent non-state groups, such as rebels, criminals, and terrorists, with implications for tackling terrorist financing as part of the terror-crime nexus. Her research shows how understanding such localized conflict dynamics can enhance negotiation and conflict resolution efforts at the local and national level. It further reveals how these dynamics connect with global illicit supply chain networks that influence shifts in power and order internationally.
The discussion will be held via Microsoft Teams.
Should you wish to attend, please complete this form by 12:00pm EST on Monday, 14 February 2022.
Biography
Dr. Annette Idler is the Director of the Global Security Programme, and Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College and Senior Research Associate at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. At Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government she teaches on global security and transnational organised crime. From 2019 to 2021, Dr Idler was Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Before taking up her current role, she was the Director of Studies at the Changing Character of War Centre at Oxford, and served as Fellow on the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on International Security.
Her work focuses on global security in the contemporary world. She studies evolving security dynamics in the context of armed conflict and the global illicit economy, transitions from war to peace, and state responses to insecurity. She is particularly interested in the political economy of borderlands as spaces where criminal, terrorist, and conflict dynamics converge, and the connections between localized conflicts and insecurities and global shifts in order and power. Dr Idler is Principal Investigator of the Conflict Platform Project and of CONPEACE. She is the author of Borderland Battles: Violence, Crime, and Governance at the Edges of Colombia’s War (Oxford University Press, 2019), which appeared in Spanish in an expanded version as Fronteras Rojas: Una Mirada al Conflicto y el Crimen desde los Márgenes de Colombia, Ecuador y Venezuela by Penguin Random House (2021), and co-editor of Transforming the War on Drugs: Warriors, Victims, and Vulnerable Regions (Oxford University Press/Hurst Publishers, 2021). Her work has appeared in journals such as World Politics, Third World Quarterly, and the Journal of Global Security Studies.
A German citizen, Dr. Idler previously worked with UNDP’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the German development cooperation. Dr Idler advises governments and international organisations and is a regular expert for internationally renowned media outlets.