Anthony Ware

I am an Associate Professor of Humanitarianism and Development at Deakin University, in Melbourne Australia.My research focusses on conflict-affected humanitarian-development situations, including analysis of both the conflict and the theory and practice of international responses. I am particularly interested in everyday peace and bottom-up, civil society or community-led peacebuilding/conflict transformation, countering violent extremism (CVE), conflict analysis, and conflict-sensitivity and do no harm (DNH). Geographically, my fieldwork, was primarily focussed on Myanmar until recently—particularly Rakhine State and the Rohingya conflict—because the multitude of conflicts in that country, and the complexity of the fragile democratisation and peace processes, captured the breadth of challenges and archetypal factors across post-conflict situations globally. I still continue research on Myanmar, but more recently have expanded fieldwork in Bangladesh, Philippines, Indonesia, Kenya and Mozambique. I came to academia from work in the development sector, and maintain strong practitioner/policy maker engagement, seeking to impact policy and practice concurrently with advancing theoretical knowledge. I usually work in close collaboration/co-design research with local civil society organisations and/or researchers. In the process, I lead multiple concurrent research teams on different projects, collaborate closely with multiple industry partners, engage frequently with local academic researchers, and often brief policy makers and key stakeholders. My latest research partnerships are with Plan International Australia, the local member of a global humanitarian/ development federation NGO, who conduct programmes and advocacy across 52 countries. Plan International globally are in the process of adopting findings from these two projects as central to their approach to peacebuilding and conflict sensitivity analysis across their global federation: a) an ARC Linkage exploring ways to countering violent and hateful extremism via programme design and implementation, and b) exploring everyday peace formation in the context of humanitarian refugee and host tensions in Bangladesh.