Dr Nicholas Pope

Nicholas Pope is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. In his work on the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Drugs and (Dis)order project, Nicholas is co-ordinating the Afghanistan research, leading the comparative stream of work on militias, and he is co-developing a distance learning programme.

Nicholas' research interests are in urban violence, urban governance, the state, networks of corruption, civil society, gender, and he has a focus on militias, paramilitaries, and mafias. As an interdisciplinary, qualitative researcher, Nicholas explores political economy structures and processes of bargaining, borderlands and frontier zones, brokerage, and different forms of political and social ordering. His work engages with questions of violence, development, and democratisation in urban environments, with a regional focus on Latin America.

• Urban violence
• Organised crime
• State system
• Corruption networks
• Rent-seeking
• Militias and paramilitaries
• Non-state armed groups
• Mafias
• Gender
• Civil society
• Policing
• Militarisation
• Security
• Violence and conflict
• Latin America
• Brazil
• Mexico
• Illicit economies
• Drugs
• Non-violent forms of politics