Jennifer Schirmer

Jennifer Schirmer is Research Professor & Projects Director of Conflict Analysis, Armed Actors and Peace Dialogues at the University of Oslo. Prior to that she was Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University. The project is funded by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry and seeks to engage the armed actors in dialogues in Colombia. Participants include high-ranking military officers, former guerrillas and representatives from the private sector, government, civil society, and the international community. She conducts research, writes extensively and advises on engaging the armed actors (both State security forces and non-State insurgents) in preparatory dialogues to peace negotiations, the mindsets of militaries in Latin America, and the origins of guerrilla movements and their willingness to accept peace accords, ceasefires and de-mobilization.

She served as a military analyst to the Guatemalan Truth Commission, was awarded a Jennings Randolph Senior Peace Fellowship for 2006-2007 at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and has received two John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing Grants in the Program on Global Security and Sustainability for research on the Guatemalan insurgency and Female Relatives of the Disappeared in Latin America. She is the author of The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy (University of Pennsylvania Press 1999).