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Book Launch: Borderland Battles

  • Harold Lee Room Pembroke College St Aldates OX1 1DW (map)

A book launch for Dr Annette Idler’s Borderland Battles: Violence, Crime and Governance at the Edges of Colombia's War

Wednesday 1st May 2019
5.15pm
Harold Lee Room, Pembroke College
A drinks Reception will follow

Annette Idler will discuss the findings of her timely new book, Borderland Battles: Violence, Crime, and Governance at the Edges of Colombia’s War, published by Oxford University Press.

Borderland Battles is based on extensive fieldwork: more than 600 interviews in and on the Colombia-Venezuela and Colombia-Ecuador border regions. Applying a "borderland lens" to security dynamics, her focus has been on the convergence of armed conflict and organised crime in these regions: how groups compete for territorial control, how they cooperate, and how they fill governance gaps by playing roles that states normally do. Dr. Idler’s work offers a more holistic and nuanced understanding of “people-centered security” than has been available so far. It has also given her detailed knowledge of the Colombia-Venezuela border zone, which is suffering important consequences of Venezuela’s crisis.

Dr. Idler's presentation will be followed by two discussants:
- Magali Alba Niño, Director of the Social Work Faculty, Simon Bolivar University Cúcuta, Colombia
- Prof Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, Oxford University

Following the presenter and discussants, there will be an open Q&A time to promote engaging discussion on the subject. 

The event is co-sponsored by Oxford University's Changing Character of War Centre, the Latin American Centre, the Centre for International Studies, and the Oxford Network of Peace Studies (OxPeace).