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This website is home to two linked research projects. First, Borderlands, Brokers and Peacebuilding is a 2-year comparative research project funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

The project aims to generate a better understanding of contested war to peace transitions in Nepal and Sri Lanka with a view to improving statebuilding and peacebuilding interventions in post-war contexts.

The originality of this project lies in the way it takes the margins of the state as the starting point for understanding and explaining the political and economic dynamics of 'post war' transition.

The project is carried out collaboratively by researchers and practitioners from the School of Oriental and African Studies (UK), University of Bath (UK), Centre for Poverty Analysis (Sri Lanka), Martin Chautari (Nepal) and International Alert.

Second, Living on the Margins: using literary comics to understand the role of borderland brokers in war to peace transitions is an 18-month comparative research project funded by Research Councils UK Partnership for Conflict, Crime and Security Research (PaCCS).

The project aims to improve understanding of, and policy responses, to post-war transitions in Nepal and Sri Lanka by examining how key local actors from peripheral regions – or ‘borderland brokers’ – help to shape changing relations between centre and peripheral regions. It adopts an innovative analytical and methodological approach to documenting the life histories of these brokers – who include local businessmen, administrators, civil society leaders or politicians – by using literary comic strips to develop narratives that are co-produced by respondents and local artists.