I'm Anna Getmansky.
I'm an assistant professor in the International Relations Department
at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Hi, my name is Professor Chris Alden.
I'm with the International Relations Department at the LSE.
I also hold a post as director of LSE IDEAS.
I'm interested in the effects of violence
and exposure to conflict on individual attitudes and behaviour.
Originally I'm from Israel, and naturally I was interested
in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
During my studies, my PhD studies at New York University,
I also became interested in how domestic politics affects
government decisions and leaders' policies,
and so naturally I started looking at how changes in public opinion
due to exposure to violence translate into subsequent policies
and actions the government take.
My projects relate to the effect of exposure to rockets
on public opinion and voting, the effects of the separation barrier
that Israel constructs in the West Bank on subsequent violence,
and currently I'm also exploring how exposure to violence
in other conflicts, for instance, through exposure to refugees
that arrive in host countries, how it affects public opinion
of the host countries towards their own conflicts
and towards their refugees.
Finally, I'm also working on how reduction in the cost of conflict
due to adoption of military automation shapes likelihood
of participation in conflict and shapes attitudes towards conflict.
I guess the origins of my research interests
are to be found in the fact that I grew up in parts of Asia
and Africa and ended up doing my PhD on South African foreign policy.
In 1990, I had an opportunity with the opening of South Africa
to go to the region.
I took that opportunity and ended up staying on for 10 years working
at one of the top universities there.
Out of that flowed my research interests, of course,
in South African foreign policy, which brought me there initially,
but more specifically the role of China in Africa,
Chinese statecraft initially focused on development issues but increasing
in security matters, so I've written on that subject.
The other area is the re-integration of ex-soldiers.
Southern Africa featured in the Cold War, and the ending of the Cold War
and conflicts with Mozambique and Angola, meant that that was the dilemma
or problem with dealing with ex-soldiers and re-integrating them into society
and into different militaries.
My research focused on Angola, Mozambique, and to an extent South Africa,
in this area.
My research can benefit several audiences.
First, I hope to benefit scholars and students who are interested
in the questions that I studied and encourage them
to collect additional data or to apply the same methods
to other contexts.
In addition, I hope my research can benefit NGOs.
For instance, the research that I do on refugees,
I've been in touch with several NGOs that deal with refugees,
and I hope that some of my insights can be applied to their work.
Finally, my work is also of interest to more general audiences,
and it affects general debates.
For instance, it was cited in the New York Times and Washington Post
that journalists from time to time are interested in the stuff that I study.
The kind of beneficiaries of my research are sort of twofold.
One, there's a general academic set of benefits out there in the sense
that you're growing knowledge.
You are providing a context within which others can understand events
or phenomena.
Then, of course, there are more specific beneficiaries
in this.
When I look at the re-integration of ex-soldiers work,
that was partially based in consultancy as well as foundation support.
These were in response to dilemmas on the ground, policy dilemmas,
what do we do with these people who had been spent a decade in conditions
of war and how do we get them ready to participate yet again in society
as contributing members.
Security is protection of individuals and key infrastructures
within a state from harm due to conflicts and statecraft,
it's basically how governments translate this need to provide security
into policies, or how they make policies to maximise provision of security
to whomever they think needs to be secured.
Within this definition, I think the security
and statecraft cluster brings together very different scholars
from the departments that do work on different aspects of these concepts.
We have workshops where people present their current projects
and comments on current projects of others.
For me, it's a great definition because it's broad enough to encapsulate
most of the phenomena that's out there.
I think concurrently, and that's been my experience
of the workshops is we collectively interrogate
what security is.
We bring different understandings of that.
This broad definition, which both focuses
on the systemic components,
and then there's almost a granular ethnographic dimension
that some of our colleagues will bring forward,
or some of the PhD students, that it forces us to think
about where we position ourselves on the security question.
Is it status?
Is it about human security in the broad definitions of it?
I think that's one of the benefits of our cluster.
One of the areas I learned about this year that inspired me
to go forward was the role of digital IR and digital statecraft in particular.
For instance, the phenomena of the Chinese diplomats
being characterised as Wolf Warriors, using social media to really punch back
from their perspective at what they say are the assumptions
out there about Chinese intentions and what have you.
There's a really interesting area that's beginning to develop,
of understanding the way we use new technologies
or not so new technologies and how they affect
the international system and the practice of international relations statecraft
and the like.
For me, the China-Africa story is partly about de-centering the research.
The traditional research on statecraft has emphasised established,
usually, Western powers.
There are going to be some commonalities of practice there, but there are also
some distinctive features.
China is of course an authoritarian state, one-party state,
and has other instruments, the party system
with which it actively seeks out to influence and secure economic positions
within Africa.
We have a powerful state, though still in many ways
a developing country, but a powerful state engaging
with the regions of the world that are some of the poorest,
some of the weakest institutional and state structures.
In that context, how do you conduct diplomacy?
How do you operationalise your interests in that realm?
Then most importantly, the story that's so often scripted
out of these systemic big powers, statecraft approaches
is the role of local actors, the local agency, because it's there.
If you know where to research, it's not hidden, but it's a story
that doesn't get told as much.
If you look at Africa, it's a hotbed of competition
of emerging powers.
Why Africa, one would say.
I think that to be a global power, you have to have an Africa policy.
It's sort of the addition, partly because of multilateral institutions.
Africa represents the largest number of states,
the biggest voting block that tends to vote as a block,
so you find Brazil, Turkey, even if you want to call it
the second tier of states, are also moving into Africa
to assert their role and their claim as a global actor as a result.
Obviously India is another one as well.
I have been working on an integration of Syrian refugees in Turkey,
and in a recent survey that I conducted with co-authors,
among over 2,000 search respondents, we tried to examine
how different characteristics of refugees affect their acceptability
by the local population.
In particular, we used the method called the conjoint experiment,
where we showed each respondent a pair of potential profiles
of Syrian refugees that vary by different attributes.
Among them was participation in the Syrian civil war
and whether the refugee fought on the side of the government,
on the side of the opposition, or did not fight.
As expected, people are less excited about integrating former fighters
who are on the side of the government.
This is because Turkey clearly aligned itself with the opposition
and against Assad's government, so obviously it trickles down
to public opinion that is very much against Syrian refugees
who fought on the side of the government.
However, when it comes to assessing acceptability of opposition fighters,
there is a partisan divide within Turkey.
Supporters of the ruling opposition party
that helps or assists the Syrian fighters
are very much in favour of integrating former fighters
of the Free Syrian Army, even more so than people
who did not fight in the Syrian civil war.
On the other hand, those who are not supporters
of the governing party are more in favour
of non-fighters, than fighters of the FSA.
This just shows that public opinion very much follows elite cues,
especially on issues on which the public
might not have full information, but also that public opinion
is quite complicated.
It's very hard to say whether people are in favour of fighters,
not in favor of fighters.
It very much depends on their partisanship.
I've done a little bit of work on the re-integration of ex-soldiers
in Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa, and similar findings
about the public attitudes, perceptions, and responses or reactions to soldiers.
What I found surprising was the degree
to which once they've demobilised
and disarmed, that ex-soldiers began to find common cause in the sense
they saw their own experiences brought them closer
than perhaps their immediate surrounding communities
in which they found themselves.
It was a curiosity
that you wouldn't necessarily think was going to happen.
There are many obviously explanations for this.
It could be that the experience of fighting somehow brings them together,
but it could also be the rejection of the non-fighters.
Very often, in post-conflict societies, people who were not engaged in fighting,
they developed this dislike towards fighters on both sides.
This might also unintentionally bring together the former fighters.
I think it really highlights the difficulty
of integrating former fighters.
This is one of the most, I think, important areas
in post-conflict societies because these people have experience
in fighting and they know how to use weapons,
and so if they're not well integrated, this might have really bad impacts
on stability down the road in those societies.
Absolutely.
I can say that there's very strong evidence
that in criminal gangs that have sprung up here and there,
that they all share one or two things, and that's networks and experience
that are related to fighting in warfare and conflict.