Ms Diana Felix Da Costa
BA (SOAS), MSc (Groningen/Uppsala)
Overview
- Name:
- Ms Diana Felix Da Costa
- Email address:
- df_costa@soas.ac.uk
- Thesis title:
- Working title: ‘Articulations between local stakeholders and the international peacebuilding apparatus in responses to local violence – a case-study of South Sudan’.
- Year of Study:
- Year of Entry 2011
Internal Supervisors
Biography
Diana has a BA in social anthropology and development studies and an MA in international humanitarian action and peacebuilding. She has been working with NGOs, government of Portugal, the World Bank, and most recently the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and has conducted research on hybrid political orders and the relationship between international and local actors in Mozambique, Chad, Timor-Leste, Haiti and South Sudan. Her interests include the ethnography of aid, international humanitarian and peacebuilding interventions, questions of state formation and the interface between customary-state political orders, transitions from war to peace, particularly at local level. Regional focus on Africa.
PhD Research
The research project examines the multiple local stakeholder perspectives on local-level peacebuilding assessing the different institutional approaches taken by ‘international peacebuilders’ (individuals and organisations) when engaging with 'local actors’ in post-conflict transition/fragile contexts in response to localised violence, through the case of South Sudan. It will investigate the expectations, understandings and perceptions of local actors in relation to those who are purportedly trying to bring and/or support peace. How do local actors relate to and conceive of different international local-level peacebuilding interventions in their community, in response to localised violence? What might in their eyes be perceived as effective interventions? Why is this so? What approaches work best in the eyes of local actors? On what basis?
On the other hand, what drives the project approach of an organisation operating at local-level and their engagement with a community, particularly when dealing with local conflict? What are the so-called ‘community-based approaches’ to local peacebuilding, and how does it take into account situations of continuing local violence? Often, attempts to achieve ownership remain largely theoretical, and interventions in practice struggle to truly engage with local actors, or at most take a very one-sided understanding of who local actors are. With a few recent exceptions, the ways in which international actors approach the micro-level dynamics of violence remain largely unknown.
The research project will investigate these issues through the case-study of South Sudan, where local sources and dynamics of violence remain largely unaddressed. The country has recently seen a rise in the number and intensity of local violence and conflict in the post-independence phase.
PhD Publications
- Karlsrud, J. & Felix da Costa, D. ‘The elusive concept of protection of civilians: A case-study of the United Nations Mission to the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT)’ in de Carvalho, B. & Sending, O.J., eds. 2011, The Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft (forthcoming)
- Felix da Costa, D. & Karlsrud, J. ‘Navigating hybrid political orders – balancing peacebuilding in Chad’, Conflict Trends Issue 2011/3
- Felix da Costa, D. & Karlsrud, J. ‘A role for Civil Affairs in community conflict resolution? MINURCAT’s Intercommunity Dialogue Strategy in eastern Chad’, Humanitarian Exchange Magazine no. 48 Overseas Development Institute, October 2010
- Karlsrud, J. & Felix da Costa, D. ‘Protection and humanitarian space: a case study of MINURCAT’, Humanitarian Exchange Magazine no. 44 Overseas Development Institute, September 2009
