Professor James Hughes

James Hughes is Professor of Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics, UK. He specialises in the analysis of contemporary political violence and terrorism, including internal armed conflicts and civil wars that pose international security challenges. His work spans also the role of ideology in statebuilding, including studies of totalitarianism, the relationship between nationalism and democratization, and the ideological roots of mass killing, ethnic cleansing and genocide. His research addresses the causes, dynamics, prevention, management and settlement of national and ethnic conflicts, as well as post-conflict stabilisation, reconstruction and state-building in deeply divided societies. His areas of expertise range from the conflicts in the former Soviet Union, to the Balkans, and Northern Ireland. His research and consultancy work has involved long periods of fieldwork and hundreds of interviews in almost all of the countries of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Russia and Ukraine. His current work encompasses radicalization and political violence broadly, with a focus on the relationship between communities and movements engaged in ideologically motivated violence, and state responses to political violence.

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The author, co-author or editor of seven books, his major studies include critiques of the role of international conditionality and intervention during EU enlargement The Myth of Conditionality (Palgrave, 2004) and of the EU's developing conflict resolution capacity EU Conflict Management (Routledge, 2010). His Chechnya from Nationalism to Jihad (University of Pensylvania Press, 2007) was widely acclaimed. He has published more than forty articles and chapters, including analyses of the EU's role in the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Kosovo, and "ethnic democracy" and discrimination against Russophones in the Baltic States. Read more about these in the Publications section.