The Security Arena in Africa: Local Order-Making in the Central African Republic, Somaliland, and South Sudan

Reinstating the state monopoly on the legitimate use of force continues to be the key strategy used to pacify conflict zones and rebuild so-called ‘fragile states’. At the same time, the empirically measurable effects of state armed forces extending their reach throughout their country on people’s security are at best ambivalent. This project investigates the often paradoxical relationship between the processes of security production in the local security arena and inhabitants’ perceptions of their own security.
DFG, 2020-2023

Tim Glawion has been honoured with the Arnold-Bergstraesser-Award for 2019. He received it for his dissertation, which focused on possibilities of international influence in regions without state authority and their impact on local security dynamics.

The COVID-19 pandemic reaches the Central African Republic (CAR) just when citizens were passing milestones for ending the country's conflicts through a peace agreement and national elections. A new rebellion broke out in late 2020 that hindered medical access to some of the most impoverished areas. An interplay of rebellion, elections and containing the pandemic have become the critical triangle deciding whether CAR can overcome its deep-seated patterns of governance that are stifling political and economic progress.
DFG, 2021-2022

The "Aquila ascendens" Young Scientists Award recognises outstanding academic work on foreign and security policy issues. Tim Glawion received the award for his doctoral thesis "The Security Arena in Africa", published by Cambridge University Press.

Reinstating the state monopoly on the legitimate use of force continues to be the key strategy used to pacify conflict zones and rebuild so-called ‘fragile states’. At the same time, the empirically measurable effects of state armed forces extending their reach throughout their country on people’s security are at best ambivalent. This project investigates the often paradoxical relationship between the processes of security production in the local security arena and inhabitants’ perceptions of their own security.
DFG, 2020-2023

Tim Glawion has been honoured with the Arnold-Bergstraesser-Award for 2019. He received it for his dissertation, which focused on possibilities of international influence in regions without state authority and their impact on local security dynamics.