Chargée de recherche FNRS

Location
Institut d'études européennes (bureau R41.4.103)
Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, 39
1050 Bruxelles
Belgique

Mailing Address
Université libre de Bruxelles
Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt, 50 - CP 172/01
1050 Bruxelles
Belgique

laura.berlingozzi@ulb.be

Bio

Laura Berlingozzi is an F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher (Chargée de recherches) at REPI, Université libre de Bruxelles, where she leads the project ASWA (Affective Sovereignties: Authoritarianism, Jihadist Insurgency and Memory Politics in West Africa). Her research sits at the intersection of critical security studies, feminist scholarship and African politics, and focuses on jihadist insurgencies, security governance, gender and political violence in the Sahel and West Africa. Before joining REPI, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the DIRPOLIS Institute of the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa (2022-2026). She holds a PhD in Political Science, European Studies and International Relations from Sant’Anna (2021), with a thesis on the reconstruction of gender in terrorism and counterterrorism discourses and practices in Mali and Niger. She was previously a visiting researcher at REPI (2019 and 2021), at the Université Abdou Moumouni in Niamey and at International Alert in Bamako, and has conducted extensive fieldwork in eight African countries.

Areas of interest

  • Jihadist insurgencies, rebel governance and political order in the Sahel and West Africa
  • Authoritarianism, military rule, memory politics and the emotional dimensions of security governance
  • Gender, political violence and feminist security studies
  • Dialogue, negotiation and mediation with armed groups; peacebuilding and hybrid governance
  • Counterterrorism, preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE), deradicalisation and reintegration; external interventions and EU security policies in Africa
  • Critical security studies; interpretive, feminist and ethnographic methods; fieldwork in conflict-affected settings

Contact and office arrangements

Meetings by appointment: please get in touch by email at laura.berlingozzi@ulb.be

Research overview

Her research examines how political order and legitimacy are produced and contested in the Sahel and West Africa, along three lines of inquiry.
At REPI, she leads the F.R.S.-FNRS project ASWA (2026-2029). In a context of successive coups and expanding jihadist coalitions, ASWA asks how militarised authority becomes politically persuasive and regionally transmissible. It argues that the durability and diffusion of authoritarian rule and insurgency rest on an affective and mnemonic regime of security governance, in which emotions, memory politics and imaginaries of the future are mobilised to stabilise authority and legitimise violence. It compares how post-coup regimes, jihadist insurgents and civic counter-publics in Mali, Guinea, Benin and Senegal compete to embody protection and moral order, and traces how these repertoires circulate across the region.
A second strand concerns gender and jihadist governance, developed in a monograph in preparation, Gender, Jihad, and the Making of Political Order in the Sahel, which theorises gender as a political technology of insurgent rule. A third strand examines dialogue, negotiation and deradicalisation as forms of governance; she is co-editing a Third World Quarterly special issue on dialogue with jihadist groups.

Publications

Peer-reviewed articles (selected)

  • Sandor, A. and Berlingozzi, L. (2026). Grassroots Geopolitical Imaginaries in the Sahel: Civil Society Security Narratives in Burkina Faso and Niger. Geopolitics, 31(4), 1400-1428.
  • Raineri, L., Cissé, A. W. and Berlingozzi, L. (2025). What Is Deradicalization? Translating Security Practices in the Maghreb and the Sahel. Terrorism and Political Violence, online first.
  • Berlingozzi, L. and Raineri, L. (2023). Reiteration or Reinvention? Jihadi Governance and Gender Practices in the Sahel. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 25(5), 843-866.
  • Berlingozzi, L. (2023). Gendered Insecurities: EU Practices in Countering Violent Extremism in Niger. European Security, 32(3), 444-463.
  • Berlingozzi, L. (2022). O Sister, Where Art Thou? Assessing the Limits of Gender Mainstreaming in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism in Mali. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(3), 659-680.
  • Berlingozzi, L. and Stoddard, E. (2020). Assessing Misaligned Counterinsurgency Practice in Niger and Nigeria. The International Spectator, 55(4), 37-53.


Contributions to edited volumes (selected)

  • Stoddard, E., Berlingozzi, L. and Raineri, L. (2026). ISSP and ISWAP: The Trajectories of IS’s Strongest Provinces. In M. K. Sheikh and S. M. Cold-Ravnkilde (eds), Jihadism in the Sahel. Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS).
  • Berlingozzi, L. (2025). External Intervention and Gender in the Sahel. In The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Politics and Gender. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
  • Berlingozzi, L. (2025). Intersecting Gender in Community Resilience to Violent Extremism: Local Actors’ Perspectives in Niger. In C. de Coning, K. Osland and M. Ako (eds), Resilience, Peacebuilding, and Preventing Violent Extremism: A Complex Systems Perspective on Sustaining Peace. London: Routledge.
  • Berlingozzi, L., Carenzi, S. and Musina, D. (2025). External Donors and the Marketing of P/CVE: Niger, Syria, and Tunisia. In M. Bøås, G. Ben-Nun, U. Engel and K. Osland (eds), Resisting Radicalization: Exploring the Non-occurrence of Violent Extremism. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.


Policy papers and commentary (selected)

  • Populin, M., Berlingozzi, L., Caproni, L., Ibrahim, M. G., Sellitti, S. and Raineri, L. (2025). Understanding Resilience: Lessons from Ghana on Preventing Jihadist Spillovers in the Gulf of Guinea. Policy Brief, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa.
  • Berlingozzi, L. and Cavallaro, M. (2025). Can Dialogue with Jihadist Groups Bring Peace to the Sahel? The New Humanitarian, 13 May.
  • Cavallaro, M., Berlingozzi, L., Elias, A., Diez, M. and Strazzari, F. (2024). From Conflict to Contact: Negotiating with Militant Islamist and Jihadi Groups in the Sahel and the Middle East. Working Paper, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa.
  • Berlingozzi, L. (2024). Sahelian Dialogues: The Path to Resilience through Religious and Traditional Authority. Working Paper, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa.
  • Stoddard, E., Berlingozzi, L., Weigand, F., Jackson, A., Mayhew, L. and Bahiss, I. (2022). Sahel Insurgency: What Policymakers Need to Do Differently. The New Humanitarian, 24 November.
Updated on September 14, 2026