Professor Neophytos Loizides

Professor of International Conflict Analysis,
Director of the Conflict Analysis Research Centre
Telephone
+44 (0)1227 823147
Professor Neophytos Loizides

About

Neophytos Loizides is Professor in International Conflict Analysis at the University of Kent. He has previously taught at Queen’s University Belfast and Princeton University and held fellowships at the University of Essex, the University of Pennsylvania (Solomon Asch Centre) and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Professor Loizides is the author of The Politics of Majority Nationalism: Framing Peace, Stalemates, and Crises, Stanford Press (2015), Designing Peace: Cyprus and Institutional Innovations in Divided Societies, University of Pennsylvania Press (2016), and Mediating Power-Sharing, Routledge (2018 with Feargal Cochrane and Thibaud Bodson).

He has also authored more than fifty academic articles and book chapters in the areas of forced displacement, nationalism and conflict regulation in deeply divided societies including most recently work published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Negotiation and Conflict Management and Peace Science. Professor Loizides has served as a consultant to various governments and international organizations including the Council of Europe and has contributed commentaries to international media such as the Guardian, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

As part of his impact activities, he has developed an open-access Mediations and Negotiations Training Program (the Café Diplomatico initiative) with the Department for the Promotion of Peace (Organisation of American States) and the Forum of Federations (Ottawa). Professor Loizides also leads the Inclusive Peace project funded by an Open Research Area (ORA7) in collaboration with the ESRC (UK), SSHRC (Canada), ANR (France/New Caledonia) and JSPS (Japan). He serves as member of the Greek-Turkish Forum and Senior Advisor to the Forum of Federations.

Research interests

Professor Loizides' research focuses on the comparative study of political accommodation in societies with deep ethnic and religious divisions, and in the study of conflict resolution designs that flow from the integration of citizen preferences and the broader public. In the past ten years, Professor Loizides won prestigious fellowships (BA, Leverhulme), competitive grants awarded in the US (USIP), Canada (SSHRC), UK (ESRC,ORA), Cyprus (Leventis Foundation), as well as consultancies (e.g., Council of Europe).

His most recently completed project has been funded by the US Institute of Peace and investigates citizen preferences in the design of effective peace processes. This project employed conjoint experiments to identify zones of possible agreement in Cyprus and Northern Ireland (Loizides, et al. 2022 in the Journal of Conflict Resolution) and to understand the impact of trade-offs and concessions in the overall public opinion.

He also holds grants from the Madison Trust, the Polden-Puckham Foundation, and the Open Research Area 7 (2023-2026) on Citizen Inclusion in Power-Sharing Settlements where he serves as the UK PI and main applicant leading a consortium of 16 academics from Canada, Japan, the UK and France/New Caledonia (award total £1,650,657). 

Teaching

  • POLI6540: Politics of Deeply Divided Societies
  • POLI8280: Theories of Conflict and Violence

Supervision

Neophytos is interested in supervising projects on topics focusing on institutional accommodation in divided societies, durable solutions to displacement and the stability of peace agreements in post-conflict settings.

Current PhD students:

  • Adam Fagg, Elite Positioning and South Africa's Constitutional Settlement
  • Theresa Bachmann, Citizen participation in the Implementation of the 2016 Peace Agreement in Colombia
  • Talal Almatar, Welfare State and Statelessness: The Case of Kuwait

Past PhD students:

  • Iosif Kovras, Assoc. Professor at University of Cyprus author of ‘Grassroots Activism and the Evolution of Transitional Justice‘ (CUP, 2017) Honourable Mention, International Studies Association book award
  • Nina Sajic, Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Banja Luka, Bosnia
  • Christoforos Fokaides, Minister of Defence, Cyprus 2016-2018/Adjunct Professor European University
  • Muzaffer Kutlay, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, GCRF Compass Project, University of Oxford
  • Duygu Ozaldin, Lecturer at Kings University London/ PDRA at the University of Kent
  • Julian De Medeiros, Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University author of Conspiracy Theory in Turkey
  • Joana Amaral, Project Manager Berghof Foundation author of Making Peace with Referendums
  • Gizem Sucuoglu, Peacebuilding Officer at the United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO)
  • Natalia Piotrowska, Deputy Head of Mission, Polish Embassy in Bucharest
  • Kathleen Ireton, Senior Researcher, Housing Needs Research, Canada
  • Chris Bennett, Special Adviser at Specialist Prosecutor’s Office, International Court of Justice
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