Oliver Jütersonke is Head of Research for the Graduate Institute’s Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP), a position he has held since the centre’s inception in 2008. He is also a Lecturer in the Graduate Institute’s Interdisciplinary Programme, a member of the strategic board of the Swiss Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries (KFPE), the Ethics Review Board of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and part of the management committee of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform.
He has been teaching graduate-level courses on social inquiry and research methods since 2011, both for the Graduate Institute’s Master in International Affairs and Master in Development Studies, as well as for the Executive Master in Development Policies and Practices (DPP). He also regularly teaches modules on peace and security, for both university and professional audiences. This notably involves the development of training curricula on conflict analysis for the Executive Master in Conflict and Fragility Management (CFM), a CCDP-led specialisation of the DPP programme, as well as in the contexts of long-term collaborations with a number of donor governments and international organisations, including the ILO and OCHA.
Oliver’s current research agenda covers the complex linkages between humanitarian responses, development cooperation and peacebuilding, the security dynamics of urban (and rapidly urbanising) environments, and the disciplinary history of International Relations. His work at the CCDP is driven by an overarching interest in the way concepts and labels interact with institutional practices and programming concerns to co-construct the identification of, and responses to, global challenges. Fieldwork has taken him inter alia to the Central Sahel, Colombia, Madagascar, the Philippines, Rwanda and Timor-Leste.
Peacebuilding and the complex relationships between security and development, with a focus on sovereignty, statebuilding and the politics of intervention;
The social and spatial dynamics of urban violence, and linkages with security perceptions, institutional design, and security sector governance;
The history of the field of International Relations and its relation to the social sciences, law and philosophy – with a particular focus on political and legal realism;
Epistemology and research methods in the context of basic and applied projects in international affairs and development.