Kars de Bruijne is a Senior Research Fellow at Clingendael's Security Unit. At the Security Unit, Kars heads the Connected Security programme focussing on how state actors undermine and how political violence in and outside Europe impact European security interests. In addition, he is an expert on political violence (conflict dynamics, gangs and rebel movements) elite politics and subnational governance in West Africa.
Kars holds a PhD in conflict studies on rationalist explanations for (civil) conflict and degrees in International Relations, History, and Philosophy. Previously, he worked as a Senior Researcher at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) heading the Syria and later West Africa Desk, Programme Manager at the Centre for European Security Studies, Lecturer at the University of Groningen and as an Independent Consultant for various organizations.
His research involves qualitative (interviews, content analysis, FGDs process tracing, archival research) and quantitative (geo-referenced conflict data and regression data) mixed-methods. He conducted extensive fieldwork with the Revolutionary United Front (2012-2015) and various street gangs (2018-2019) in Sierra Leone as well as fieldwork in Turkey (2008/2009), Slovenia (2014), Ghana (2012) and Cote d’Ivoire (2019).
