Postgraduate research students

My doctoral research examines justifications for violence as they are constructed in the narratives of ex-combatants of the FARC guerrilla and the AUC paramilitary group in Colombia. The aim is to understand the nature of these justifications between 1982 and 2006, a period of heightened military intensity in the Colombian conflict. In contrast to the dominant approaches within the academic literature on the Colombian conflict, which concentrates on general analyses and the views of victims, this research will centre on ex-combatants’ perspectives which remain under-researched in the field of transitional justice in Colombia. This project seeks to answer critical questions about violence and peacebuilding, and it will focus on the following research question: How do FARC and AUC ex-combatants explain the logic of violence developed and deployed during the Colombian armed conflict between 1982 and 2006?

• Professor Naomi Head
• Dr Allan Gillies