We are pleased to announce that Séverine Autesserre, Associate Professor of Political Science and Institute member, was awarded a 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, which provides support for intellectuals in science, law, technology, business, and public policy whose research addresses urgent contemporary issues from fresh perspectives. She is one of 33 fellowship winners, each of whom are awarded up to $200,000.  Autesserre’s proposal, “International Peacebuilding and Local Success: Assumptions, Myths, and Reality,” involved gathering ethnographic material from the Congo and other locations to analyze the subtleties of bottom-up international peacebuilding.

“I am thrilled, humbled and deeply honored to be awarded this prestigious fellowship,” Autesserre said. “I am also ecstatic to have the support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York to invest in the research for my new project.”

The Carnegie Corporation of New York seeks recommendations from hundreds of leaders representing a range of universities, think tanks, publishers, and nonprofit organizations nationwide in order to amass a pool of high-caliber individuals for consideration. The nominees are carefully reviewed by a distinguished jury comprised of heads of the country’s preeminent scholarly institutions and presidents of leading universities and philanthropic foundations, who make the final selections.

Read more about the Carnegie Fellowship.

Autesserre has conducted extensive field research in eastern Congo and in eight other conflict zones and her research has been covered widely by local, national and international media. Her research has won many grants and awards, and she has been invited to speak and write for multiple policy and scholarly audiences, including a recent TED talk on stopping mass violence.

Additionally, she has published two books and many articles on peacebuilding, civil wars, and international interventions. Her first book, The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding (Cambridge University Press, 2010), won the 2012 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order and the 2011 Chadwick Alger Prize. Her second book, Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Interventions (Cambridge University Press, 2014), won the Best Book of the Year award from the International Studies Association.

For more information on Autesserre’s work, please visit her academic profile.