Expert Network Expert of the Month – July 2016 Contributor

Annika Björkdahl is Professor of Political Science at Lund University, Sweden. Her current research includes international and local conflict prevention, peacebuilding and transitional justice as well as international organisations and norms in international relations. She has worked on conflict prevention issues at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and with the United Nations, New York on developing an Early Warning System. Björkdahl was the manager of the EUFP7-project Just and Durable Peace 2009-2011. Currently she is running three research projects on gender and transitional justice, divided cities, and urban peacebuilding funded by the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Development Agency. She is also one of the principle investigators in the six-year project State-making and the oriins of the Global Order and funded by the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileums fund.

Among Annika’s recent publications are Rethinking Peacebuilding: The Quest for Just Peace in the Middle East and the Western Balkans (2013 Routledge), Divided Cities (2015 Nordic Academic Press), Friction in Peacebuilding: Global and Local encounters in post-conflict societies (2016 Routledge), and Spatializing Peace and Conflict (2016 Palgrave) and she has published articles in journal such as Peace and Change, Human Rights Review, Journal of European Public Policy, Millennium, and Security Dialogue. She is currently the Editor in Chief of Cooperation and Conflict.

Articles Authored

How can we understand the processes and outcomes that arise from frictional encounters in peacebuilding? (1 July 2016) - In turbulent times it important to recall the origins of the European Union. The EU in itself was conceived as a peace project.