Mareike Schomerus Busara, Kenya

Mareike Schomerus is VP at Busara, a research institute headquartered in Kenya, and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, where she teaches different research methods. Mareike has published widely on violent conflict, international development and conflict-resolution, evidence-based policy, and behavioural mechanisms in post-conflict recovery. Many of these publications are co-authored with Anouk S. Rigterink in a fruitful inter-epistemological collaboration spanning close to two decades. Mareike co-edited volumes (on African secessionism and South Sudan’s borderlands (Palgrave Macmillan) and authored The Lord’s Resistance Army: Violence and Peacemaking in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and Lives Amid Violence: Transforming Development in the Wake of Conflict (Bloomsbury, 2023, open access here). She was formerly Director of Programme Politics and Governance and Research Director of the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium at ODI. Before becoming a social scientist, Mareike worked as a journalist. Mareike holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science as well as advanced degrees from Columbia University, the University of Bremen, and Smith College.

Research Design in Politics and International Relations