DIIS researcher receives prestigious European grant

Senior Researcher Mona Kanwal Sheikh from the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) has been awarded a Starting Grant of EUR 1.5 million (DKK 11.2 million) from the European Research Council (ERC) to lead a 5-year research project on transnational jihad. The ERC is an official EU institution and among the premier European funding organizations for frontier research of the highest quality, and it is designed to support excellent researchers to compose their own independent research team and programme.

“I am thrilled to receive that recognition from the ERC and can’t wait to get started. On a personal level it is a great honour. But I also think that the project impact-wise can prove to be groundbreaking since transnational jihadism is one of the greatest contemporary challenges on the international agenda for peace and security today,” says Sheikh.

The research team will look at the mechanisms of escalation and de-escalation of jihadist conflicts across Asia, the Middle East, the Arab Peninsula and Africa focusing particularly on the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. “We still do not know why movements like the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda are able to tap into local conflicts, why they successfully expand to some places more than other, or how to de-link them from local conflicts once they are there”, Sheikh explains.

The ambition of the project is to create synergy between the research fields of religious studies, security and peace and conflict research. For this purpose, the project will bring together top scholars from around the world. The research project is planned to begin in January 2019.

DIIS Director Kristian Fischer is proud of this recognition of DIIS as a platform for excellent frontier research. “This is DIIS’ first ERC grant and a testament to DIIS’ standing in the international research community. It is furthermore a tremendous recognition of Mona Kanwal Sheikh as an excellent researcher in her field, and we have great expectations of what will come out of this very interesting project,” says Fischer.

For further information, please contact Mona Kanwal Sheikh on mosh@diis.dk.