The EUI Syria Initiative started in 2016 and is hosted by the Robert Schuman Centre. Led by Professor Agnes Favier, the initiative aims to analyse the key local trends and dynamics of the country’s multi-layered conflict, to generate a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities for post-conflict stabilisation and peace-building. The Initiative hosts different research projects, publishes various types of publications in English and Arabic, including Policy Briefs and more in-depth Research Reports and organises academic events (roundtables, webinars, and annual conferences).
In 2018, the Syria Initiative launched its ‘Wartime and post-conflict in Syria project’. The project aimed at providing quality and in-depth academic research on the Syria conflict’s dynamics and trends based on field-research; stimulate new approaches and policy responses to the Syrian conflict through a regular dialogue between researchers, policy makers, donors and practitioners; and build an empower a network of Syrian researchers who contribute to research informing international policy and practice related to their country. By 2022, the project had produced more than 65 field-based publications focusing on themes, to include key actors and dynamics of local governance; war economy; and regional interventions and their impact on local socio-political dynamics.
Building on the multi-year Wartime and post-conflict in Syria project, the Syria Initiative is now announcing the launch of a new project titled ‘Syrian Trajectories: Challenges and opportunities for peacebuilding’. Under the scientific coordination of Abdullah Al-Jabassini and Joseph Daher, this new project aims to generate informed analysis related to key social, political, economic, and conflict developments. Using field-based research undertaken mostly by Syrian academics and analysts, the new project deliberates on themes that emanate from the unsteady but deadlocked military stalemate that emerged in Syria. This includes, but not limited to, control and power dynamics in areas controlled by the Syrian regime, active rebels, and de facto authorities, institutional features and functions, state elites and informal power structures, underlying causes of violence and instability, and the role played by local and external actors to contribute to the fulfilment of basic needs in areas of limited statehood.
For more information see here.