Profile
Sara Hellmuller CCDP

Sara Hellmüller

Research Professor International Relations and Political Science
Faculty Associate, Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP)
email
Spoken languages
English, German, French, Italian
Theme
  • Peace, War and Conflict
  • Global Governance
Geographical Area
  • Africa, Middle
  • Middle East
  • Africa, North

Profile

 

Sara Hellmüller is a Research Professor in the International Relations and Political Science Department at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She is a peace researcher with over a decade of experience conducting research in conflict-affected contexts and has spent more than a year in eastern DR Congo.

Prior to her current role, she was a Senior Researcher at ETH Zurich and an SNSF Assistant Professor with the Graduate Institute's Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP). She was also an Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Montreal. Until 2019, she was a Senior Researcher at swisspeace and a Lecturer at the University of Basel. Sara obtained her PhD in Political Science from the University of Basel. During her doctoral studies, she was a Researcher and Research Coordinator at swisspeace, a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York, and an Affiliated Researcher at the University of Bunia in DR Congo.

Sara is the principal investigator of a SNSF Starting Grant project focusing on belligerents’ consent to UN peace missions (2025-2029) and is the co-investigator of a project that academically documents Switzerland’s first membership on the UN Security Council (2023-2025) (funded by the Fondation pour l’Université de Lausanne). Before that, she was the principal investigator of a SNSF PRIMA Grant project on the impact of changing world politics on UN peace promotion (2020-2024) and a SNSF AGORA project on UN Peace Missions and their Mandates (2023-2025). She was also lead researcher on a SNSF Division I project on the role of norms in peace mediation (2015-2019). Together with her team, she established a comprehensive dataset on UN peace mission mandates, the UNPMM, that is also available on an interactive website and mobile application (App Store / Google Play), and she curated a roving exhibition on UN peace missions that was shown in various places including New York, Stockholm, Zürich, and Geneva.

Sara is deeply committed to transformative science by combining in-depth empirical research with the application of her expertise in practice. She has completed mandates for international, regional, and non-governmental organizations as well as the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in support of peace processes in Darfur, DR Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, and Libya. In particular, she co-managed a project on civil society inclusion with the UN Office of the Special Envoy for Syria from 2016 to 2018.  

 

THEMATIC EXPERTISE
 

  • Peacekeeping, peacebuilding, reconstruction policy
  • Armed conflicts, violence
  • International organisations, UN
  • Governance & multilateralism
  • Local governance

 

GEOGRAPHICAL EXPERTISE
 

  • Democratic Republic of the Congo
  • Syria
  • Yemen

 

RECENT PUBLICATIONS
 

Articles

  • Salaymeh, Bilal; Sara Hellmüller, Fanny Badache, 2025, “Following a Middle Way: How Rising Powers Navigate Sovereignty Debates in Peacebuilding”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 69 (2).
  • Hellmüller, Sara; Bilal Salaymeh, 2025, “Warmakers as Peacemakers: Transactionalism in the Political Marketplace of Peace Processes”, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 46 (2), pp. 312-342.
  • Hellmüller, Sara; Fanny Badache, 2025, “Children of their time: The impact of world politics on United Nations peace operations”, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 46 (2), pp. 177-196.
  • Hellmüller, Sara, 2024, “Broadening Perspectives on Inclusive Peacemaking: The Case of the UN Mediation in Syria”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 45 (5), pp. 963-980.
  • Duursma, Allard; Corinne Bara; Nina Wilén; Sara Hellmüller; John Karlsrud; Kseniya Oksamytna; Janek Bruker; Susanna Campbell; Salvator Cusimano; Marco Donati; Han Dorussen; Dirk Druet; Valentin Geier; Marine Epiney; Linnéa Gelot; Dennis Gyllensporre; Annick Hiensch; Lisa Hultman; Charles T. Hunt; Rajkumar Cheney Krishnan; Patryk I. Labuda; Sascha Langenbach; Annika Hilding Norberg; Alexandra Novosseloff; Daniel Oriesek; Emily Paddon Rhoads; Francesco Re; Jenna Russo; Melanie Sauter; Hannah Smidt; Ueli Staeger; Andreas Wenger, 2023, “UN Peacekeeping at 75: Achievements, Challenges, and Prospects”, International Peacekeeping, Vol. 30 (4), pp. 415-476.
  • Hellmüller, Sara, 2023, “Knowledge Production on Mediation: Practice-Oriented, but not Practice-Relevant?”, International Affairs, Vol. 99 (5), pp. 1847-1866.
  • Hellmüller, Sara; Laurent Goetschel; Kristoffer Lidén, 2023, “Knowledge Production on Peace: Actors, Hierarchies, and Policy Relevance”, International Affairs, Vol. 99 (5), pp. 1839-1846.
  • Hellmüller, Sara; Xiang-Yun Rosalind Tan; Corinne Bara, 2023, “What is in a Mandate: Introducing the UN Peace Mission Mandates Dataset”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 68 (1), pp. 166-192.
  • Hellmüller, Sara; Bilal Salaymeh, 2023, “Multiparty Mediation in a Changing World: The Emergence and Impact of Parallel Processes to UN Peacemaking in Syria and Libya”, International Journal of Conflict Management. Vol. 35 (1), pp. 129-149.
  • Hellmüller, Sara; Marie Lobjoy; Xiang-Yun Rosalind Tan, 2023, “Beyond Generations: An Alternative Approach to Categorizing Peace Missions”, Global Governance, Vol. 28 (4), pp. 509-533.
  • Badache, Fanny; Sara Hellmüller; Bilal Salaymeh, 2022, “Conflict-Management or Conflict-Resolution: How Do Major Powers Conceive the Role of the United Nations“, in Peacebuilding Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 43 (4), pp. 547-571.
  • Hellmüller, Sara, 2022, “Peacemaking in a Shifting World Order: A Macro-Level Analysis of UN Mediation in Syria”, Review of International Studies, Vol 48 (3), pp. 543-559.
  • Hellmüller, Sara; Martin Wählisch, 2022, “Reflecting about the Past, Present and Future of UN Mediation”, International Negotiation, Vol. 27 (1), pp. 1-9.
  • Hellmüller, Sara, 2021, “A Trans-Scalar Approach to Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice: Insights from the Democratic Republic of Congo”, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 57 (4), pp. 415-432.
  • Hellmüller, Sara, 2021, “The Challenge of Forging Consent to UN Mediation in Internationalized Civil Wars: The Case of Syria”, International Negotiation, Vol. 27 (1), pp. 103-130.
  • Hellmüller, Sara, 2021, “Normen in der Mediation: Analyse und Ausblick”, Zeitschrift für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Vol. 10 (1), pp. 77-81.

Books

  • De Cia, Annalisa; Sara Hellmüller; Elizabeth Mesok (eds.), 2025, “Women in Science: Experiences of Female Academics in Switzerland”, Bielefeld: transcript / Columbia University Press.
  • Hellmüller, Sara, 2023, “Die Interaktion zwischen lokalen und internationalen Akteuren der Friedensförderung: Partner für den Frieden”, Cham: Springer, (Translation of English book).

 

GRANTS

  • 01/25-12/29: Grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Starting Grant) for the project “Yes, I Do: A Theory on Belligerent Consent to UN Peace Missions”.
  • 03/23-06/24: Funding by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs for the project “UN Peace Missions and their Mandates” in the context of their UN Security Council membership.
  • 04/23-12/24: Funding by the Swiss National Science Foundation (AGORA) for the project “Communicating about Peace: UN Peace Missions and their Mandates” .
  • 01/23-12/25: Funding by the Foundation for the University of Lausanne for the project “Promoting Sustainability in the UN Security Council: The Role of Switzerland as an Elected Member”, with Prof. Lucile Maertens.
  • 01/20-12/24: Grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation (PRIMA) for project “A Child of its Time: The Impact of World Politics on UN Peacebuilding”

 

ORCID PROFILE

GOOGLE SCHOLAR