Biography

Natasja Rupesinghe is a scholar of conflict and political violence. Her thesis examines how communities respond to jihadist mobilisation in central Mali. The thesis investigated why some communities ally or join jihadists, while others violently resist them, drawing on almost six months of fieldwork conducted with war-affected people in Bamako between September 2021 - April 2022.

At the EUI, Natasja will continue to research civilian agency in war, shifting the focus to high risk behaviour in communal conflict. The research aims to explore how people risk their lives to support persecuted groups across identity cleavages, how communities use informal social institutions to promote non-violence over violence and how leaders pursue dialogue with armed groups to foster peace locally.

Natasja is a DPhil candidate at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, in the Department of Politics and International Relations. Natasja has a BA degree in European Social and Political Studies, specialising in International Relations, and French from University College London, and an MSc in Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has previously been a Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, in Oslo. In addition to academic positions, Natasja was seconded to the African Union, in the Peace Operations Division between 2016-2017. She has worked in non-governmental organisations, such as Human Rights Watch in London and Relief International in Colombo.

Mentor

• Jeffrey T. Checkel