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Department of Development Studies

Claudia Seymour

BA (Vanderbilt University) MA (Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies)

Overview

Staff Silhouette
Name:
Claudia Seymour
Email address:
Thesis title:
Young people’s experiences of and means of coping with violence in North and South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo
Year of Study:
2010 Entry
Internal Supervisors

PhD Research

Claudia Seymour’s PhD research project is an interdisciplinary exploration of young people’s experiences of and means of coping with violence in the provinces of North and South Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. It engages with psychological resilience theory, the anthropology of violence, and structural analyses drawn from sociology to explore how young people cope with political and structural violence. The qualitative methodological approach for this project has relied primarily on the documentation of young people’s narratives as well as participant observation; data was collected during fieldwork conducted in 2010 and 2011, and has been influenced by more than three years of living and working in the Kivus between 2006 and 2011.

PhD Publications

  • Seymour, C., 2012. Ambiguous Agencies: Coping and survival in eastern DRC. Children’s Geographies, 10 (4), 373-384.
  • Seymour, C., 2011. Selective Outrage: the dangers of children’s DDR in eastern DRC. Disarmament Forum, 3, 57- 66.
  • Seymour, C., 2011. Re-conceptualising child protection interventions in situations of chronic conflict: North Kivu, DRC. In:  S. Evers, C. Notermans and E. van Ommering (eds.), Not Just a Victim: The Child as Catalyst and Witness of Contemporary Africa. Leiden: Brill, 223-246.
  • Seymour, C., 2009. Book review of The UNHCR: The Politics and Practice of Refugee Protection into the Twenty-first Century. Journal of Refugee Studies, 22 (2), 242- 243.

PhD Conferences

Conference Papers
  • ‘That’s Just How it Is’: Submission and Victimhood in Coping with Violence. Paper presented at the Development Studies Association annual conference. London, November 2012.
  • Ambiguous Agencies: Coping and survival in eastern DRC. Paper presented at the ESRC-funded seminar entitled Violence and Childhood: International Perspectives: Children affected by war. University of London, June 2011.
  • The Politics of Apolitics: A critique of international protection approaches in eastern DRC. Paper presented at the Dynamics of conflict and forced migration in the Democratic Republic of Congo conference. Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, November 2010.
  • Hearing and not hearing: international responses to sexual violence in eastern DRC. Paper presented at the international Children and War conference. University of Salzburg, October 2010.
  • Children choosing combat? Failures of children’s DDR in a context of chronic conflict. Paper presented at the Protecting People in Conflict & Crises conference. University of Oxford, September 2009.
  • Re-conceptualising child protection interventions in situations of chronic conflict. Paper presented at the African Children in Focus conference. University of Leiden, September 2008.“Ambiguous Agencies: Coping and Survival in eastern DRC” paper presented at the ESRC Violence and Children Seminar at Birkbeck College, June 2011.

PhD Affiliations

Development Studies Association