Dr Robin Luckham is a political sociologist with over 60 years professional experience, more than 50 at IDS. He began his academic career in Nigeria and Ghana and has also worked in the USA (Harvard) and Australia (ANU).
Since completing his PhD and book on the Nigerian Military, Robin has focused his work on critical scrutiny of the state, political violence and development, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Throughout he has situated this work within a wider global analysis of war and peace together with their impacts on poor, marginalised and vulnerable people, including the latter’s political agency and capacity to resist. Most recently he has taken a similar approach to the wars upon Ukraine and upon Gaza, including their disastrous impacts on human security and on international development.
Robin has a long record of research, publication and teaching on the military and militarism, disarmament and development, violent conflict, peace and human security – as well as on democracy and democratisation, the legal profession and the political economy of law.
He has maintained close links with colleagues in the global south and has participated in south-south and south-north initiatives. He was a founding member of the African Security Sector Network (ASSN) and of its Executive Committee. He was Chair of the Global Consortium on Security Transformation (GCST) 2006-8 and of the International Advisory Group of the Global Facilitation Network on Security Sector Reform (GFN-SSR) 2002-7.
Robin has made major contributions to IDS teaching programmes, including co-directing four iterations of the MPhil Development Studies and developing and teaching an innovative MA course module on the Governance of (In)Security between 2000 and 2021 organised around student-led analyses of national conflict-situations
Languages: French (working knowledge)
