Maria Amjad
Hello and Welcome!
I am a third-year Ph.D. Candidate in the Program Security, Risk, and Vulnerability at the University of Genoa, Italy. My research interests revolve around rebel groups' strategies during war and peace. I am working on building my regional expertise in the Af-Pak region.
My dissertation explores the variation in the rebel groups' behavior regarding participation in the formal rounds of negotiation with the state. In this attempt, I am taking the Taliban's participation in the Doha negotiations as the main case study. In doing so, I aim to examine internal organizational documents, negotiation agreements, and secondary sources available on the Taliban, along with conducting interviews with leading scholars and experts on the topic.
Currently, I am a visiting fellow at the Center for International Conflict- Analysis and Management (CICAM) at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where I am working on the case study of Taliban participation in Doha negotiations for my dissertation.
Previously, I was a fellow 2021-2022 at the Civil War Paths project of The Centre for the Comparative Study of Civil War at the University of Sheffield. I have a Master's degree in International Relations from the University of Bologna, Italy. My Master's dissertation focused on the change in terrorist organizations' behavior after the failure of peace negotiations with the state in the cases of Tehreek-i-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP) and Boko Haram. I have a BSc. Hons degree in Political Science from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore, Pakistan. It was the time when Pakistan was beset by a new spate of terrorist attacks, which triggered many new political developments in the country. It sparked in me an interest in studying conflict, violence, extremism, counterterrorism, and counterinsurgency, especially in the South Asian context.
I have sought to remain attached to my area of interest through professional experiences as well. To name a few, I have worked as a Counterterrorism Analyst at The Counterterrorism Group and a Security Analyst at Intelligence Fusion.
I am passionate about photography, music, movies, sports, literature, and museums and I would love to travel more than I actually can. In the future, I plan to dedicate a section of this website to my interests. So, stay tuned.
Upcoming
In this section, I update about events of my upcoming research presentation....
Presenting my research at CRS 2023 at Kings College London (KCL), London, the UK. More details will be available in the coming months...
