Prof. Dr. Thorsten Bonacker

Thorsten Bonacker
Dr. Kathrin Bonacker

Deputy Executive Director

Contact information

+49 6421 28-24574 +49 6421 28-24528 thorsten.bonacker@staff 1 Ketzerbach 11
35032 Marburg
F|20 Institutsgebäude (Room: 103 resp. +1/0030)

Organizational unit

Philipps-Universität Marburg Zentrum für Konfliktforschung (ZfK)

Thorsten Bonacker is professor for peace and conflict studies at the Center for Conflict Studies and the Faculty of Social Science and Philosophy at Marburg University. At the Center he directs two master programs in peace and conflict studies and is also president's delegate of the European University for Peace, Justice and Inclusive Socities (EUPeace) and the director of the Collaborative Research Center 138 "Dynamics of Security"

He is an elected member of the committee for social sciences at the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and a member of the research board of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs as well as of the Institute for Peace Reseach and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg. At Marburg he is board member of the International Center for the Research and Documentation of War Crime Trials.

Since 2022 he co-leads the research network Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict and is a member in the Regional Research Centre Transformations of Political Violence. Funded by the DAAD in the Erasmus program he directs a project on Integration of Work-based Learning in Conflict, Peace and Security Studies.

Together with the Civil Peace Service in the GIZ and partner universities in Battambang (Cambodia), Dili (Timor Leste) and Marawi (Mindanao, Philippines), he is involved in the project Southeast Asian University Partnership for Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation.

Research

T. Bonacker

His research is located at the crossroad of international political sociology and peace and conflict studies. He has long been interested in theories and methods of peace and conflict studies as well as critical security studies. Currently, he is working on practices of international administration in postcolonial and postwar societies, reparation politics of victim organizations in postwar justice and the affective dimension of political violence. Methodologically, he uses theory driven and comparative research designs. Regionally he is particularly interested in Central Asia and Southeast Asia (particularly Cambodia and Timor Leste).

Teaching

T.Bonacker

Reguraly he is teaching classes on introduction on peace and conflict studies, methods of conflict analysis, violent conflicts in the 20th and 21st century and an ongoing research seminar on international rule in postwar and postcolonal societies.
Other topics of courses and for the supervision of theses are:
postcolonial and post communist statebuilding, humanitarian intervention, transitional justice & peacebuilding, regional conflict in Southeast Asia, interstate conflicts after 1945, contentious politics in postwar societies, international organisations in peace and conflict, critical security studies

Since 2010 he has organised a series of summer schools in Central Asia. He is also the acadmic co-director of the Hessen International Summer University.

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