Dr Francesca Baldwin is a postdoctoral historian of gender and war. Her doctoral research in the Tigray region of Ethiopia addressed the gendered dimensions of armed groups and of women's lives as combatants, survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, activists and resistance leaders. Her postdoctoral interests are in the legacies of violence in women's lives after civil conflict, including intimate partner violence, femicide and contested social norms regarding female behaviour. Francesca is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Exeter, working on the AHRC funded grant 'Children of War: Evolving Local and Global Understandings of Child Soldiering in African Conflicts', where she leads the case study in the Horn of Africa.

As a social geographer, Dr. Lekha Borah researches on the issues of injustices and violations towards womenkind. Her research employs qualitative approaches to comprehend the dimensions of cultural and social factors in the manifestation of complex human societal norm, functions, and existence. Her doctoral research work focusedatunraveling the spatialities of crime against women in Assam (India), with a special focus on witch-hunting across tribal communities. Her work has been recognized and supported by generous grants from the University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi, India. She shares her work across scholarly publications and presentations in reputed journals, and seminars. She is highly driven to make a safer and supportive social environment for the victims of crime and shed light on the transgression women face in both their social and personal spaces.

Teaching has always been at the forefront of her professional commitments which she has been enthusiastically pursuing since 2020.Through her research and teaching, Dr. Lekha Borah continues to advocate for gender equity and sustainable development in Northeast India.

Francisca Castro completed her PhD in Political Science at Humboldt University in Berlin and currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the International Security and Development Center, where she studies political behavior and attitudes in fragile settings and post-conflict countries. In her WarEffects project, Francisca studies how localized violence in the context of the Peruvian Internal Armed Conflict during the 1980s and 1990s relates to women's presence in public office, exploring how guerrilla and state-led violence affected the supply of women for office, and also their electoral success. She is also associated with the ERC Project "Participation and Representation in the Digital Age," working on how people engage in both electoral and non-electoral political acts, focusing on Latin America. 

Nedha de Silva is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University, where she explores the intersections of sustainability and net-zero futures. As an interdisciplinary researcher and ethnographer, her work examines gender, debt, economic security, climate change, and violence in post-conflict contexts.

She completed her PhD at Monash University, focusing on rural women’s experiences of economic security in post-war Sri Lanka. Her research draws on Sociology, Feminist Political Economy, and Feminist Security Studies to theorize structural violence and financial insecurity.

Nedha has extensive experience in research and teaching across Sri Lanka, Australia, and the UK. She has contributed to international projects on women in informal labor markets, gendered violence, religion, and climate change. Her interdisciplinary work informs policy debates on sustainable development, gendered economies, and post-war reconstruction.

Horace Gninafon is an economist whose research interests lie at the intersection of development economics, gender economics, health and education economics, and public policy evaluation. Part of his research also examines the socio-economic impacts of shocks, including conflicts, weather shocks, and health shocks, and explores the extent to which public policies and interventions can mitigate (or fail to mitigate) the effects of these shocks on development outcomes. Over the past decade, Horace has designed and coordinated numerous experimental and quasi-experimental studies in developing countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia, with a particular focus on Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (FCV) countries. His research has been published in journals such as Economics of Education Review, Population and Development Review and Environmental Research: Climate.

Chulani Kodikara currently works with the Social Scientists' Association (SSA) and as an independent researcher in Sri Lanka. She is also part of the editorial collective of Polity, the English language magazine of the SSA. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 2022, on the post-war struggle for truth and justice being waged by Tamil women next-of-kin of the disappeared in Sri Lanka. Prior to embarking on a PhD she worked as a researcher /activist with the Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms, the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, the Muslim Women's Research and Action Forum and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sri Lanka. From 2004-2006, she also worked with the government of Sri Lanka's Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process which was responsible for coordinating peace talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), following the ceasefire of 2002. Her research delves into law as a site of women’s struggles for justice and equality, with a particular emphasis on Sri Lanka. 

Isabel Lopera is a researcher passionate about gender, peacebuilding, and post-conflict economic reintegration. Her work delves into the transition of female FARC-EP ex-combatants from collective rural reintegration to individualized urban livelihoods, uncovering how gender shapes economic opportunities after war. With a PhD from the University of Salamanca, she has explored EU peace interventions in Colombia, hybrid peacebuilding, and local ownership.

As a WarEffects Global Fellow, she will conduct fieldwork to examine whether social and solidarity economies empower women—or reinforce existing gender burdens. Through her research, she aims to bridge the gap between policy and lived experiences, offering fresh insights into gendered economic agency in post-agreement societies.

Sergi Martínez is an assistant professor at the School of Finance, Economics, and Government of EAFIT University. He moved to Colombia after a year at the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice of Princeton University as a postdoctoral research associate and graduating from the European University Institute. His research evaluates how historical institutions and violent pasts define political behaviors and culture, and how such usually long-standing norms may change. 

Nerea Gándara-Guerra is an assistant professor at the School of Finance, Economics, and Government of EAFIT University. She earned her PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute. Her research focuses on public opinion and social movements, with a particular emphasis on gender and politics.

Santiago Medina Villarreal, Human Rights Defender, born in Popayán, Cauca,  southwestern of Colombia. He holds a law degree, a Master's in Anthropology, and is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the Universidad de Los Andes. His research interests include social memory, transitional justice, peacebuilding, racial and environmental justice, and their interrelationships. His research project analyzes the micro-level impacts of war through processes of resilience, resistance, and memory within rural and Afro-Colombian communities at humanitarian and biodiversity zones, along the Jiguamiandó and Curvaradó rivers in Chocó. In particular, he works with communities focusing on their experiences of resistance and the creation of festive memory about the past. With over 18 years of experience in the administration of justice (both international and national), the implementation and evaluation of transitional justice mechanisms, and his participated in memory and truth reconstruction projects. He has regional experience in Central and South America.

I am a Ph.D. candidate and researcher at the Institute for Political Science at Heidelberg University. My doctoral research is part of a DFG-funded research project, "Sparking Events, Collective Emotions, and Cascades of Cultural Identity Conflicts (SPARK)." In my research, I examine two key aspects of contentious self-mobilization among cultural identity groups and voters. First, I explore how groups of protesters and rioters mobilize in response to triggering events that amplify existing conflict narratives in their communities. Second, I analyze how contentious mobilization, particularly concerning electoral integrity, drives autocratic transformations in hybrid regime settings. My research has taken me to various regions of Pakistan and Sri Lanka to study significant cases of political protests and riots. In particular, I have conducted extensive fieldwork with the conflict-displaced Pashtun community in Pakistan, as well as the Sinhalese-Buddhist and Muslim communities in Sri Lanka. Additionally, I have conducted remote fieldwork in New Delhi among the Indian Muslim community. Previously, I have worked with organizations in the publishing and development sectors, primarily in editorial and research positions.

PhD student in Political Science at Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), with an MSc in Social Policy (Research) from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a background as a Human Rights lawyer from Universidad del Rosario. I bring ten years of experience in teaching, research, and project management within academia and civil society organizations. My research focuses on inequalities, gender, politics, conflict, and peacebuilding, through a multidisciplinary and feminist approach. I have worked as Regional Coordinator of the Gender, Justice and Security Hub (GJS Hub) from the London School of Economics in partnership with Universidad de los Andes. Scientific Collaborator of the German-Colombian Peace Institute of the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. Coordinator of the Participation Project in Colombia of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies of University of Notre Dame. Lead researcher (Colombia) of the “Women’s Rights After War” project and Coordinator of the Gender Observatory of the Colombian Electoral Observation Mission.

I am a second-year PhD candidate at the Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen, Norway. My research focuses on electoral behavior and party politics in autocracies, particularly in contexts involving conflict and repression. Methodologically, I apply rational choice models to analyze political decision-making and causal inference methods to conduct empirical analyses with observational data. Using district-level election data from Turkey, my current work examines how electoral violence affects voter turnout and explores how these effects vary with the strength of opposition and incumbent parties.