Spotlight on … New Research Fellow Mikael Naghizadeh

What is the focus of your research and what are you most looking forward to in this position at the GIGA?

My research is on political violence, where my current research focus is on war crimes against civilians, focused especially on the Horn of Africa. I am looking forward to finally answering some questions I have not had the resources to pursue previously.

What difficulties do you expect to encoun- ter during your research?

There is a lot of issues when working on a topic such as violence. My work so far has primarily been using satellites, where the biggest issues are more practical relating to quality of images and coverage etc. The next step involves interviews which raise a range of challenges relating to the welfare of the interviewees.

What would you like the impact of your research to be?

A goal for my current research is to outline how academic methods can be used to uncover and document unreported violence. Longer term I hope to write work that has the- oretical staying power.

Qualitative or quantitative?

Either, depends on the research question.

Reading or writing?

Cannot write without reading.

Big conference or small workshop?

Small workshop.

Paperback book or eBook?

Paperback for novels, eBook for academic work because it is better for the workflow.