• Focus: Humanitarian Aid – Development – Peace nexus; Syria peace negotiations

• Ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews

• Leading research teams on the HDP nexus and local conceptualisations of conflict (2021-ongoing), and war, displacement and peace processes (2016-2021); 7+ team members: postdoctoral researchers, PhD researchers, student assistants, +INGO partners

• Experience in team management, supervising fieldwork, developing project-specific ethical guidelines

• Additional research on warfare, enforced disappearances, fear and hope 

Designed and lectured MA-courses

• Contemporary Syria: Perspectives from Political Anthropology (annually)

• Making War, Making Peace (since winter 2021)

• Academic base for field research: Geneva peace negotiations on Syria

• Participation in ANSO seminars and events as a guest researcher

Humanitarian Conflict Response Institute; Institute for Development Policy and Management; Department of Middle Eastern Studies; Sociology (cf. 7. Teaching). 

Responsibilities included: 

• Courses at BA and MA level: Development and Reconstruction; The Contemporary Middle East; Globalisation and Development; War, Migration and Health; Global Health and Food Insecurity; and others (appr. 380 students in total) 

• Developed and led weekly lectures

• Taught seminars to international groups of students from diverse academic disciplines, facilitated debates 

• Assessed student performance, supervised final dissertations

• Conceptualising, planning and implementing of four year research project 

• Negotiated access, established networks with governmental and non-governmental actors in politically highly sensitive field

• Ethnographic fieldwork, qualitative and quantitative methods (interviews, participation, observation, statistics)

• Published research findings (monograph)

• Served as a research assistant for Middle Eastern Studies

• 2021 - 2024.  Local conceptions of conflict, conflict resolution, peace and the HDP nexus. Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

• 2016 - 2021.  Between Civil War and Integration – Refugees and the Challenges and Opportunities of Societal Change in North Rhine-Westphalia. Funded by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

• 2009 - 2015.  Supervision of MA students at the University of Manchester 

• 2020 - Present.  Supervision of MA students at the University of Bonn 

• British Society of Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES)

• Deutsche Gesellschaft Vorderer Orient (DAVO)

• European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA)

• American Anthropological Association (AAA)

• Reviewer for (selected): 

  • University of Cambridge Press

  • Journal of Refugee Law

  • Journal of Peace Research 

  • Swiss Political Science Review

  • Anthropological Quarterly

  • Journal of Peacebuilding and Development

  • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 

• 2024.  Meininghaus, Esther: “Spotlight on Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus Implementation in Iraq.” BICC.  Link >

• 2021.  Meininghaus, Esther: “In Theory. A New Local Turn for Track One Peace Process Research: Anthropological Approaches”, in: Journal of Negotiation, Bd. 37, Nr. 3, S. 325-359. DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12371.  Link >

• 2021.  Meininghaus, Esther, & Katja Mielke: “Meaningful political participation. Lessons learnt from UN mediation in Afghanistan and Syria.” BICC.   Link >

• 2020.  Meininghaus, Esther und Carina Schlüsing: “War in Syria: The Translocal Dimension of Fighter Mobilisation,” in: Small Wars and Insurgencies, Bd. 31, Nr. 3, S. 475–510, DOI:10.1080/09592318.2020.1726568.  Link >

• 2016.  Meininghaus, Esther: Creating Consent in Ba'thist Syria: Women and Welfare in a Totalitarian State. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN: 9781784531157.  Link >