Research areas

Primary research areas

Maria-Louise Clausen’s primary areas of research are conflict, security, and peace in the Middle East, especially Yemen and Iraq. She is especially interested in state-building, relations between state and non-state actors as well as consequences of competing perceptions of legitimate political order.

Current research

Maria-Louise Clausen’s current research focuses on how international actors influence relations between state and non-state actors in conflict-affected states, including the implications of external involvement in intrastate conflict and conflict resolution. Clausen is also interested in the political and moral implications of remote warfare, as well as relations between different types or temporally distinct (Western) interventions.

Clausen is furthermore interested in the development and political implications of strategic narratives on conflict, peace and statebuilding by both state and non-state actors, including how these are developed and utilized in multilateral organizations such as the UN and NATO, as well as regional organizations such as the LAS.

More recently, Clausen is beginning to explore how the introduction of renewable energy impact state-society relations.

Projects

Clausen is the Principal Investigator (PI) of a research project titled Violent Peacemakers (2022-2025). The project contributes to existing research by exploring theoretical and empirical implications of considering connections between external military intervention and state-building interventions aimed at (re)building the security sector. Empirically, the project focuses on Iraq and Yemen. The project is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Social sciences)

Maria-Louise Clausen is also part of the research project, ”Renewable energy, violent conflict, and gender equality” (2023-2027), which aims at advancing our understanding of the relationship between the introduction of renewable energy and conflict. Empirically, the project focuses on Yemen, and it is funded by Formas (A Swedish Research Council for sustainable development)

Maria-Louise Clausen is also a non-resident fellow in the Sectarianism, Proxies & De-sectarianisation project (SEPAD) where she contributes with expert knowledge on Yemen and Iraq.