Peer Schouten

Primary research areas

Peer Schouten is a senior researcher at DIIS and an associate researcher at the International Peace Information Service in Antwerp, and professor at the Conflict Research Group, Ghent University.

His research focuses on order in conflict, with a focus on the role of roadblocks and transit taxes in conflict and state formation; mineral extraction and conflict economies; and the politics of logistics and infrastructure. He has extensive research experience in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan.

A former SSRC Conflict Research Fellow and Visiting Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, Peer is the author of Roadblock Politics: the origins of violence in Central Africa (Cambridge University Press).

Current research

Peer Schouten is currently leading a research project on the political economy of checkpoints in conflict, together with the International Center for Tax and Development and the Centre on Armed Groups. Read more about it here.

Peer has over ten years of experience in applying an innovative mix of geospatial and qualitative methods to explore conflict dynamics in challenging settings. Collaborative methods allow local expertise, priorities, and perceptions to co-constitute the research agenda and shape its findings so that they may resonate locally. This approach continues to inspire and offer unique human and academic insights into the complexity of violence, state-making and its contestation, and economical (under)development in some of the world's most interesting and challenging environments.