Dr Ibrahim Magara

Dr Ibrahim Sakawa Magara is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Coventry University’s Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations (CTPSR) with PeaceRep.

Magara holds a PhD in politics and international studies from Loughborough University and his work broadly focuses on peace and security regionalism in the horn of Africa. Magara’s research work is interdisciplinary and covers elements of entanglements of proximate actors in political violence and various crises within the IGAD region, Africa’s (sub)regional bodies and mechanisms as spaces for agonistic peace, intricacies regionalised intra-state political transitions, proxy wars and military alliances, conflict spill-over effects, emergencies of non-liberal/illiberal peace, practicalities and challenges to impartiality and neutrality in (sub)region-led multi-layered peace negotiations and the gendering of peace and security at (sub)regional levels.

Magara is keen on research that informs policy and practice. In 2021, he was a Policy Leader Fellow at the European University Institute’s School of Transnational Governance in Italy. Besides academic research interests, Magara has been a peace practitioner with many years of experience supporting and coordinating implementation of multi-faceted peace and justice programmes across Africa. Prior to taking up his PhD position in 2018, Magara was working for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) on a multi-country peace project that, among others, supported local peace processes, cross-border peace-making and inter-religious peace action across many countries in Africa.