From left: Professors Elisabeth Prügl, Jussi Hanhimäki and Alessandro Monsutti

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) recently announced that it will fund three new research projects carried out by Institute professors.

Elisabeth Prügl, Professor of International Relations/ Political Science, Deputy-Director of the Institute and Director of the Programme on Gender and Global Change, received funds for her project “Gender Experts and Gender Expertise”. The project examines the organisation of gender experts and the meaning of gender expertise in transnational spaces. The team composed of Francoise Grange, Hayley Thompson and Christine Verschuur from the Institute, and Rahel Kunz of the University of Lausanne, will carry out empirical research at the headquarters of international governmental and non-governmental organisations and in three case countries, Colombia, Mali, and Nepal.

The foundation granted Professor of International History, Jussi Hanhimäki funds for his project “International Terrorism, the West, and the Cold War, 1970-1992”. The project will look at how the Cold War influenced international terrorism, how countries funded and supported terrorist groups to instrumentalise them for their Cold War struggles, and how western European governments responded to this challenge. He will be assisted by Bernhard Blumenau, researcher at the Institute, and a research assistant.

Professor of Anthropology and Sociology of Development, Alessandro Monsutti received funds for a project entitled “Cohabitation, connivences et antagonismes en situation de ‘nouvelles’ mixités urbaines”. He and his team comprised of Professor Sandro Cattacin of the University of Geneva and Philippe Gazagne, researcher at the Graduate Institute, will examine three neighbourhoods in Geneva and focus on the economic activity, community-based associations, and ceremonial links between the residents of these heavily multicultural areas. Comparative studies will also be carried out in multicultural neighbourhoods in Paris, Athens and Rotterdam. Professor Monsutti also received a grant for a project entitled “Ethnic Differentiation, Interethnic Relations and Conflict in Central Asia: The Case of the Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan". It will be carried out with the Universities of Zurich, Halle-Wittenberg, and the Max Planck Institute.

Research at the Institute is conducted by faculty and researchers working independently and with colleagues from other academic institutions in Switzerland and throughout the world. Research is also undertaken by multi-disciplinary teams from the Institute’s Centres and Programmes. The Institute’s research clusters are: conflict, security and peacebuilding; development policies and practices; culture, religion and identity; environment and natural resources; finance; gender; globalisation; governance; migration and refugees; non-state actors and civil society; rural development; trade, regionalism and integration; dispute settlement; and humanitarian action.