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TOON DIRKX

Postdoctoral Researcher, Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding
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Spoken languages
Dutch, English, Spanish, German

Toon Dirkx is a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding at the Geneva Graduate Institute. His main research interests are governance by armed groups in civil wars, the legacies of rebel governance, the relations between armed groups and foreign actors, and the politics of peace- and state-building. He has engaged with these themes through archival research and qualitative fieldwork in Afghanistan, Colombia, and the Horn of Africa.

From 2023 until 2025 Toon was a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, where he worked on a research project about rebel diplomacy in South Sudan. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Basel. During his doctoral studies, Toon worked as a PhD Fellow and Program Officer at the swisspeace Statehood and Conflict programme. He held visiting fellowships at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies at Addis Ababa University, and the Institute for Peace, Development, and Security Studies at the University of Juba. Toon has also worked as a researcher at the Centre for Conflict Studies at Utrecht University.

Toon’s research has been supported by the Dutch Research Council, the University of Basel, the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies, and the Swiss National Science Foundation. In addition to his academic research, he has informed various multilateral organisations, governments, and non-governmental organisations through commissioned research. In 2022, he was seconded to the Policy and Operations Evaluations Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands where he co-authored the government-mandated independent evaluation of the Dutch contribution to NATO’s Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan.


 

Areas of expertise
 

  • Governance by armed groups in civil war
  • Legacies of rebel governance
  • Politics of peace-and state-building
  • Rebel diplomacy

 

Selected publications:

Dirkx, T. (2024). The Clashing Legacies of EPLF Rebel Governance in Post-Independent Eritrea. Civil Wars, 1-25.

Van der Neut, W., Westerhof, P. & Dirkx, T. (2023). Between wish and reality: Evaluation of the Dutch contribution to Resolute Support. Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. The Hague: IOB.

Dirkx, T. (2020). The Institutional Legacies of Rebel Governance: Theorising the Political Stability of Post-Insurgent States. Swisspeace Working Paper series. Basel: Swiss Peace Foundation.

Frerks, G. & Dirkx, T. (2019). Manoeuvring wars, rebels and governments: the EU’s experience in Sri Lanka. In M. Martin & V. Bojicic-Dzelilovic (Eds.), Whole-of-Society Peacebuilding. London: Routledge. [Book chapter that was originally published as part of a special issue in the journal Peacebuilding].

Frerks, G. & Dirkx, T. (2018). Manoeuvring wars, rebels and governments: the EU’s experience in Sri Lanka. Peacebuilding, 6(3), 264-280.

Dirkx, T. (2017). The Unintended Consequences of US Support on Militia Governance in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan. Civil Wars, 19(3), 377-401.

Terpstra, N. & Dirkx, T. (2017). [Review of the book Strategic Narratives, Public Opinion and War: Winning Domestic Support for the Afghan War, by B. de Graaf, G. Dimitriu & J. Ringsmose (Eds.)]. Militaire Spectator, 186(1), 35-36.

Dirkx, T. & Terpstra, N. (2016). Niet-statelijke actoren in niet-statelijke agewapende conflicten. In G. Frerks, B. de Graaf & E. Müller (Eds.), Conflict: Over conflict en conflictbeheersing (pp. 369-395). Alphen a/d Rijn: Wolters Kluwer.