Dr Argyro Kartsonaki

Dr. Argyro Kartsonaki is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg and a Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. Argyro is also the co-editor of Ethnopolitics and OSCE Insights. Her area of expertise is peace and security with a particular interest in secession and war-to-peace transitions after civil wars. Her research has been funded, among others, by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK, and the United States Institute of Peace. Argyro holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Birmingham, UK, an MA in Political Analysis of European Public Policy from the University of Crete, Greece, and a B.A. in International and European Economic and Political Studies from the University of Macedonia, Greece.

Argyro Kartsonaki works on secessionist conflicts, unilateral declarations of independence and the prevention of civil war recurrence. She investigates how separatists promote their claims for statehood and international recognition through an analysis of declarations of independence. This part of her research is inter-disciplinary combining international relations, history and international law. She also examines cases of civil war recurrence to understand what leads to relapse to violence and how to prevent it. Previously she worked on conflict management in the disputed territories of Iraq, and on Kosovo’s secession from Serbia. Her work has been published in Conflict Management and Peace Science, Nations and Nationalism, Civil Wars, Global Society, the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, as well as in edited volumes. She is the author of the book "Breaking Away: Kosovo’s Unilateral Secession".

Publications