ERC grant for Corinna Jentzsch: Countering Jihadi insurgencies in Africa
The European Research Council (ERC) announced the awarding of 494 Starting Grants to young scientists across Europe. One of these scholars is Corinna Jentzsch, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Political Science. She received this grant for her research project ‘Countering Jihadi Insurgencies in Africa: Repress, Resist & Reorder’.
A comparative look at conflict across Africa
Throughout her studies, Jentzsch was always interested in democracy, peace and development. She got interested in studying these on the African continent when a friend asked her to join her on a trip to Ghana: ‘I enjoyed travelling there and learned a lot, and later I had the opportunity to do an internship in Malawi, which deepened my interest in African politics.’ She began her doctoral studies with the intention of doing fieldwork in central Africa. After she had chosen her topic, it turned out that Mozambique would be a fascinating case to study, ‘as the impact of community-initiated militias in the Mozambican civil war (the topic of my book Violent Resistance) had been overlooked. I’ve studied individual countries in depth, so with this grant, I want to take a more comparative look at conflict across Africa.’
Jihadist insurgencies
Jentzsch explains that she has been fascinated by political violence for a long time. Why do people use it, and how do people respond to it? ‘I think when violence is involved, it means that the stakes of the issues are very high. But at the same time, life goes on and people confronted with violence try to continue living their normal lives. How do they manage to do that, how do they cope? It’s tough to research violence and you have to take a lot of care to protect the people you research, your team members, and yourself. It’s an important responsibility.’
When it comes to jihadist insurgencies on the African continent, Jentzsch explains that we often hear a lot about how France, the US, or other countries see them and respond to them. With this project, she wants to look more at what the people locally – affected communities, but also governments –are actually doing to respond to the violence and protect civilians. And how that interacts with the responses of foreign countries or international organisations like the UN. Jentzsch: ‘These international actors don’t act in a vacuum, there is already a lot happening once the conflict starts, and this is what I want to investigate.’
Response of governments and communities
Jentzsch summarises that the focus of this new ERC project lies on understanding how governments respond to jihadist insurgencies (why they ignore or repress the armed group), how affected communities respond (why they resist or join the armed group) and how (if at all) governments and communities collaborate in their response. Jentzsch: ‘Together with a team of PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers and local partners, I will study these questions in three different countries (Mali, Nigeria and Mozambique) through extensive fieldwork that includes interviews and archival work, all over a period of five years.’
There are two main outcomes Jentzsch aims for: ‘one is to have better knowledge and understanding of what is happening on the ground and explain why communities and governments respond in certain ways; the other is to bring scholars and practitioners together who work on these conflicts in Africa to share their expertise, improve our comparative perspective, and learn much more from each other. And hopefully, we will also have a good basis from which to understand which responses may help mitigate a conflict, and which escalate them.’
Support and feedback from colleagues
Jentzsch is happy with the awarding of this grant, and looks forward to working with a team of conflict researchers on the topic. Jentzsch: ‘I’m also very thankful for all the support I’ve received within the Institute of Political Science in preparing this grant application, my colleagues’ feedback in particular.’
Photo: Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (Facebook)