Laura Wise
PeaceRep Senior Research Fellow and Programme Coordinator
BSc Econ, MA
Tel: 0131 650 2062
Email: Laura.Wise@ed.ac.uk
View my publicationsLaura Wise is a Research Fellow and Programme Coordinator with the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform (PeaceRep).
Laura’s research explores the margins of peace processes and conflict-affected societies and their intersections with the politics of inclusion. She is particulary interested in local peace processes, ethnopolitics, and women, peace and security.
As part of the PeaceRep consortium, Laura is leading research projects investigating local peace processes in fragmented conflicts, and the role of gender and ethnic minorities in peace agreement implementation. This research is funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO). Her work on gender perspectives in peace agreements has informed United Nations policy on gender and peace processes, most recently the UN Secretary General's annual report on women, peace and security.
Laura is part of the team behind the PA-X Peace Agreements Database, a dataset of all peace agreements globally from 1990 to 2022, and a co-creator of PeaceFem, a mobile phone app that illustrates women’s inclusion in peace processes around the world. She has previously worked as part of the UN Women project 'Enhancing Women’s Leadership for Sustainable Peace in Fragile Contexts in the MENA Region', supporting women engaged in peace processes in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Libya.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Laura led research for the Covid Collective to investigate PeaceTech methods of understanding pandemic ceasefires. From 2020-2022, she collected and analysed responses to the UN Ceasefire Call as a co-creator of the "Ceasefires in a time of Covid-19" interactive tracker, and has published multiple resources on vaccination ceasefires during public health emergencies.
Her work has been published in various academic journals, book chapters, policy, and online outlets, including the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Contemporary Peacemaking, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, British Academy, and LSE Women, Peace and Security.
Laura holds a BSc Econ in International Politics and the Third World from Aberystwyth University and an MA in Comparative Ethnic Conflict from Queen's University Belfast. As part of the PeaceRep team, she is a 2023 recipient of the RSE Mary Somerville Medal which recognises exceptional achievement in research in teamwork and collaborative endeavour within Scottish Higher Education Institutes
Twitter: @auttonwise
