ERIS is a group addressing emerging fields of research in international/transnational politics, with a focus on regional security, critical geopolitics and political economy. We study conflict and social change with attention to dynamics of peripheralization, control and liberation. Our main research lines cluster around:

• critical approaches to security: security (and humanitarian) discourses, practices and technologies;
• reconfigurations of territoriality and regional security models: critical border studies, hybrid security orders, extra-legal economies and resource wars;
• state formation and transformation: transnational organised crime, terrorism, foreign fighters.

Our research projects focus on the MENA region, the Sahel and West Africa, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and the Balkans. 

ERIS regularly meets in the context of two Pisa-based PhD programs: the PhD Human Rights and Global Politics, and PEI (Political Science, European Politics and International Relations, jointly organized with the Universities of Siena, Pisa and Florence).

Ongoing projects

• PRISMA – Promoting Resilient, Inclusive and Safe CoMmunities in the Horn of Africa: in search of mutually beneficial solutions”
• (2020-22) PREVEX – Preventing Violent Extremism in the Balkans and the MENA: Strengthening Resilience in Enabling Environments, funded by EU H2020
• (2019-22) FRAGVENT – Fragile states and violent entrepreneurs: conflict, climate, refugees, funded by the Norwegian Research Council

Our Events 

• Roundtable: The “return of geopolitics” and the study of international relations. 13 January 2022.
• Conferenza: L’Italia e la Geopolitica. 14 gennaio 2022.
• Seasonal School: “African Perspectives: Change, Conflicts, Connections”. 7-11 March 2022 (linkare il titolo dell’evento a https://www.santannapisa.it/it/african-perspectives-change-conflicts-connections)
• ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime, General Conference: Crossing territorial and disciplinary (b)orders: empirical, analytical and policy perspectives on organised crime. 4-6 July, jointly organized with University of Pisa and Scuola Normale Superiore (linkare il titolo dell’evento a https://ecpr.eu/Events/188).

Recent Publications

• Raineri L., Baldaro E., 2021. The place of Africa in international relations: the centrality of the margins in Global IR. Italian Political Science Review.
• Raineri L., Strazzari F., 2021. Drug Smuggling and the Stability of Fragile States. The diverging trajectories of Mali and Niger. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.
• Raineri L., 2021. The Bioeconomy of Sahel Borders: Informal Practices of Revenue and Data Extraction. Geopolitics.
• Berlingozzi L., Stoddard E. (2020). Assessing Misaligned Counterinsurgency Practice in Niger and Nigeria. The International Spectator 55(4).
• Baldaro E. (2020). Rashomon in the Sahel: Conflict dynamics of security regionalism. Security Dialogue.
• Bøås M., Strazzari F., 2020. Governance, Fragility and Insurgency in the Sahel: A Hybrid Political Order in the Making. The International Spectator 55(4).
• Raineri L., 2020. Explaining the Rise of Jihadism in Africa: the Crucial Case of the Islamic State of the Greater Sahara, Terrorism and Political Violence.
• Raineri L., Strazzari F., 2019. (B)ordering Hybrid Security? EU Stabilisation Practices in the Sahara-Sahel Region. Ethnopolitics 18(5)
• Polese A., Russo A., Strazzari F., (eds.) 2019. Governance Beyond the Law: the immoral, the illegal, the informal. London: Palgrave Macmillan
• Martini A., 2019. The Syrian wars of words: international and local instrumentalisations of the war on terror. Third World Quarterly
• Piras E., 2019. Migration and Theories of Justice: a Critical Reappraisal. Soft Power. Revista euroamericana de teoría e historia de la política y del derecho 6(1)

Source: Mario Ragazzi: www.ragazziconsulting.com