14.02.2023 Welcome at the Center for Conflict Studies, Aidan Gnoth!

Aidan Gnoth’s work in peace and conflict studies, specialises in how knowledge on peace and international peacebuilding is contested and transmitted into policy and practice. He has published on the role of pacifism and nonviolence in peace processes and international relations and takes a keen interest in contesting the boundaries of utopian thinking within current peace discourses. His doctoral research drew on his experience in disaster relief coordination and the political sphere to explore how attempts to radically transform the objectives and processes of international peace processes are co-opted and reappropriated by mainstream actors and interests.

In his new position, Aidan will work under Prof. Thorsten Bonacker in the third funding phase of the DFG Collaborative Research Centre (SFB/TRR 138) "Dynamics of Security", Subproject B05 — Securitization and Desecuritization in International Trusteeship Administrations. Aidan’s research will trace the continuities of these processes into contemporary peacebuilding efforts, exploring how political contestation shaped and defined both positive and problematic understandings of international governance. With this research, Aidan hopes to demonstrate why particular narratives of peace, governance, and the good-life were more successful than others, while also providing a space for alternative conceptions and marginalised ideas to be reconsidered.