Activities and events
November 2025
Chiara De Franco conducted fieldwork the Central African Republic, embedded with the EU Training Mission (EUTM RCA) in Bangui. The fieldwork focused on how EU and UN missions translate human rights and the protection of civilians into daily practice in one of the world’s most fragile political and security environments. This research complements earlier fieldwork in Somalia.
September 2025
Linnéa Gelot participated in an Expert Workshop on International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and Civilian Harm Mitigation (CHM) at the Sanremo International Institute on Humanitarian Law. The workshop was organized in partnership with UN DPO and convened legal experts, military personnel, academics, and humanitarian professionals from around the world to examine the impact of CHM policies on compliance with IHL. On the final day, participants discussed the challenges, opportunities, and future directions at the intersection of CHM and IHL compliance strategies. While perspectives varied, all experts agreed on the need to strengthen the complementarity between the two, with the ultimate goal of reducing civilian harm in armed conflict.
Linnéa Gelot also conducted fieldwork with the US Center of Excellence for the Protection of Civilians at the Department of Defense in Washington, DC.
September 2025
On 26 September, PROTEX hosted the workshop Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR) and the Future of Human Protection in Brussels, bringing together practitioners, experts, and representatives from the United Nations, NATO, the European Union, and other international organisations, as well as members of the International Contact Group on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR) and civil society organisations. The event was organised by Chiara De Franco and Linnéa Gelot, who gave the opening remarks and moderated the sessions.
August 2025
Chiara De Franco attended EISA PEC 2025, where she hosted a roundtable on The Future of Human Protection, with contributions from Alessandra Russo (University of Trento), Kerstin Carlson (Roskilde University), Nina Græger (PRIO), Anastasia Prokorhova (EUI), and Niklas Bremberg (Stockholm University). The roundtable presented work that will appear as a Global Studies Quarterly special forum in 2026.
Chiara De Franco also presented two PROTEX-related papers:
- De Franco, C. Caught between rituals and ritualism: Human Rights Conditionality in EU Security Assistance
- De Franco, C. and Maren Hofius. Who cares? Practices of Care on the Frontlines of Diplomacy
June 2025
Chiara De Franco and Linnéa Gelot formed a research collaboration with the community based organisation Isha Human Rights Organization (IHRO) in Baidoa, Somalia. IHRO has implemented a pilot research project resulting in the report Community Perspectives on Conflict Related Harm Mitigation.
June 2025
Linnéa Gelot served as speaker at a workshop on the African peace and security architecture convened by the Swedish Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She exemplified based on her work with Chiara De Franco the valuable expertise that has been developed by the civilian casualty tracking analysis and response cell (CCTARC) in tracking harm to civilians caused by the AU peace support missions in Somalia. She explained why the current funding impasse facing AUSSOM is a concern for all global supporters of civilian harm mitigation developments.
June 2025
Chiara De Franco attended the workshop Europe, the EU and the ‘Rest of the World’ in the Trump Era: Order Making or (Dis)Order Taking, hosted by Federica Bocchi (LSE), Benedetta Voltolini (King’s College London), and Karen E. Smith (LSE). She presented the paper:
- De Franco, C. To be or not to be Transactional: on the Future of Normative Power Europe
May 2025
March 2025
March 2025
Chiara De Franco shared PROTEX findings at the ISA Annual Convention 2025 in Chicago:
- Roundtable: Norm Contestation – Where We Are, Where We Are Going (Chair: Lucrecia Garcia Iommi), with Chiara De Franco, Lisbeth Zimmermann, Ruji Auethavornpipat, Sassan Gholiagha, Wayne Sandholtz, Simone Tholens, Carmen Wunderlich, and Jeffrey S. Lantis.
- Papers:
- De Franco, C. and Maren Hofius, Who cares? On the Ethics of Care on the Frontlines of Diplomacy
- De Franco, C. and Kerstin Carlson, Disrupting Protection of Civilian Logics: Reparative Justice in the AU-led Missions in Somalia
January 2025
On 30-31 January , Protex hosted the conference The Future of Human Protection: Principles, Actors, and Practices in a Post-liberal World at Copenhagen Univesity, bringing together leading scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to examine the evolving landscape of human protection. The event was organised by Chiara De Franco and Linnéa Gelot, who gave the opening remarks and moderated the sessions.
November 2024
Chiara De Franco carried out fieldwork in Brussels, engaging with officials at the European External Action Service (EEAS) and other EU institutions. The focus was on evolving EU approaches to Human Rights Due Diligence and the politics of human protection in external action.
October 2024
Linnéa Gelot conducted fieldwork in Kismayo (Somalia) and Nairobi. In Kismayo, she was with regional office and meeting community representatives, security forces, and Unsom officials. I asked about local perceptions of ATMIS security and protection.
June 2024
Cristina Stefan was invited to Oslo, Norway, to participate in the Expert Workshop 30 Years after the Genocide in Rwanda: Gender and atrocity prevention, hosted by Peace Research Institute Oslo and organised by the Norwegian Centre for Holocaust and Minority Studies. Cristina’s participation focused on the work of the UN as an international institution committed to preventing atrocity crimes from occurring as well as gendering its atrocity prevention agenda.
April 2024
Chiara De Franco and Linnéa Gelot conducted embedded fieldwork in Mogadishu with the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), particularly its Civilian Casualty Tracking, Analysis, and Response Cell (CCTARC), as well as with the EU Training Mission (EUTM Somalia). This field research provided unique insights into how protection practices are negotiated and implemented in high-risk conflict environments.
March 2024
Chiara De Franco attended the ISA Annual Convention in San Francisco, where she contributed to two roundtables and presented two papers.
- Roundtables:
- International Institutions and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine (Chair: Lise Morje Howard, Georgetown University) and Kseniya Oksamytna (City, University of London) with Vera Axyonova, Chiara De Franco, Heidi Hardt, Karim Makdisi, and David Hastings Dunn.
- Papers:
- De Franco, C. How Human Protection Becomes a Technicality: Navigating the Nexus of Know-Where and Know-What in Diplomatic Practice
- De Franco, C. Displacing Protection: Governance Technologies in Inter-IGO Security Assistance
February 2024
Chiara De Franco attended the workshop Re-thinking the Future of Peace and Security in the Baltic Sea Region – Avenues for Resesarch and Policy, hosted by Institut für Friedensforschung und Sicherheitspolitik in Berlin. She gave the talk:
- Connecting the Dots of Baltic, European, and African Security.
December 2023
Chiara De Franco gave the keynote speech at th the Workshop on Diffusion and Contestation of Norms in Global Governance in Instanbul, organised by BILGINormsEU: JM Chair on Norms and Turkey-EU Relations at the European Institute of Istanbul Bilgi University in collaboration with the European Studies Field of Excellence.
December 2023
Chiara De Franco undertook fieldwork in Nairobi, meeting with AU, UN, and EU representatives, diplomats, and civil society actors. The fieldwork examined regional perspectives on protection and the inter-organisational dynamics shaping responses to civilian harm.
September 2023
Sofie Rose was an invited speaker at the conference When words fight at the Université Panthéon-Assas in Paris. She gave a talk about narratives surrounding returning child soldiers and their connection to the reproduction of local gender norms and power structures.
September 2023
- De Franco, C. and Gelot, L. Shielding civilians or taming violent peacekeepers: the case of civilian harm mitigation
June 2023
Cristina Stefan participated in the British International Studies Association (BISA) Annual Conference, which took place in Glasgow, UK. Cristina presented her work on the UN and atrocity prevention, with a paper titled Atrocity Prevention: What it takes to incorporate a gender lens.
March 2023
While in Montreal, Canada, to attend the International Studies Association with the PROTEX team, Cristina Stefan was invited to an Expert Roundtable on Mass Atrocity Prevention, an event hosted by the Simon-Skjodt Centre for the Prevention of Genocide of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at McGill University, Canada.
March 2023
The Protex team attended the ISA Annual Convention in Montreal and participated in roundtables and panels:
- Roundtable: Foreign Policy Shifts among Nordic Countries in the Wake of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine (Chair: Torunn L. Tryggestad, PRIO), with Niklas Bremberg, Nina Græger, Tuomas Forsberg, and Chiara De Franco.
- Papers:
- De Franco, C. and Gelot, L. Improvising Protection: On Soldiers’ Everyday Creativity in Peace Operations
- Gelot, L. Public Opinions and Peacekeeper Performance: Experimental Evidence about Blue and Green Berets in South Sudan and Somalia
- Stefan, C. Atrocity Prevention: What it Takes to Incorporate a Gender Lens
- Stefan, C. A Feminist Foreign Policy in the UK? Implications for Atrocity Prevention
- Panel chaired by Cristina Stefan: The Search for Norm Champions: Small States and the Responsibility to Protect at the United Nations, with Naomi Kikoler, Sarka Kolmasova, Frank Okyere Osei, Jonas Fritzler, and Marn Mennecke.
March 2023
Chiara De Franco participated in the conference The rise of Security Assistance: Evolution, effects and order(ing) in and of a global practice at the European University Institute/Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (EUI/RSCAC) in Florence. She gave a talk on human rights conditionality in security assistance.
March 2023
Sofie Rose was an Invited speaker at WILPF Denmark’s (Women’s international league for peace and freedom) annual meeting at KVINFO. She gave a talk about the intersection of stigmatization, gender and violence of victims of wartime abuses in post-war and transitional societies.
March 2023
On 9 March, Sofie Rose defended her PhD thesis titled Stigma, Gender, and Violence: Rethinking the Stigmatization of Survivors Of Wartime Abuses. The PhD thesis was assessed by a committee comprising Associate Professor Vincent Keating (Chair), SDU, Associate Professor Jenny Hedström, Swedish Defence University, and Associate Professor Catia Confortini, Wellesley College.
February 2023
Cristina Stefan was invited to represent the Leeds Social Sciences Institute (LSSI) at the University of Leeds, on a business trip to Queensland University in Brisbane, Australia, an initiative showcasing impactful research conducted by scholars at University of Leeds. Based on her work for the PROTEX project, she talked about the different ways in which intergovernmental organisations, such as the UN and EU, engage with protection norms in practice. From Brisbane, she then travelled to Melbourne to discuss feminist institutionalism and gender norms with Professor Jaqui True.
January 2023
Chiara De Franco attended the workshop Early Warning and Prevention of Atrocity Crimes at Coventry University, where she presented a paper co-authored with Louise Moe:
De Franco, C., & Moe, L. W. (2024). Assembling intelligence in United Nations peacekeeping: between transformation and path dependency.
January 2023
Sofie Rose was an Invited speaker at the Swedish Defense College (Forsvarshöghskolan) workshop on gender and power in transitions to peace. She gave a talk on knowledge production and epistemology when researching the lives and experiences of children born of wartime sexual violence.
November 2022
Cristina Stefan organized, and co-hosted together with Akila Radhakrishnan, Director of the Global Justice Center, the second of the two-series interdisciplinary Expert Workshops she designed to take place in New York, USA, on the topic of Gendering Atrocity Prevention at the UN. Cristina designed this series of inter-disciplinary expert workshops, which took place in close proximity to UN Headquarters in New York, with the main goal of consortium-building amongst expert policymakers, legal scholars, political scientists, UN officials, and civil society working on various aspects related to the Women, Peace and Security, gender issues, and prevention of atrocities agendas. Cristina’s contributions to this workshop included examples from her research with Chiara De Franco for the PROTEX’s study on how the UN and the EU engage in exchanges on shaping the narratives of protection and turning different norms of protection into practice.
September 2022
Cristina Stefan attended the 15th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, the European International Studies Association (EISA)’s Annual Conference, which took place in Athens, Greece. She delivered a presentation called Women in Libya: Challenging Gender Practices.
July 2022
Cristina organized the first of a two-series inter-disciplinary Expert Workshops on Gendering Atrocity Prevention at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, in New York, USA. Cristina co-hosted this expert workshop with Professor Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, director of the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights (CLIHHR), Yeshiva University. The event brought together experts in international law, gender, and atrocity prevention to address the incorporation of gender and intersectional lenses into the UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes. The workshop commenced with a Keynote by the two UN Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, namely Alice Nderitu and George Okoth-Obbo respectively, to kickstart a conversation towards future work on gendering the atrocity prevention agenda at the UN.
June 2022
Chiara De Franco participated in the workshop When Technology Meets Humanity: Democratic Resilience at the End of War at Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichman University in Tel Aviv.
June 2022
Sofie Rose preresented research paper titled Locating the stigmatization of children born of wartime rape on a continuum of violence at the European Peace Research Association (EuPRA) at Tampere University in Finland.
June 2022
Cristina Stefan was invited to participate in the Expert Roundtable “Evidence Based Solutions to Tackling Intensifying Global Challenges”, organised by the Stimson Center in Geneva, Switzerland, with participation from distinguished international experts on global governance, including former president of Slovenia, Danilo Turk.
June 2022
Sofie Rose presented the research paper Continuums of Violence: Experiences of Stigma Among Children Born of Wartime Sexual Violence to the British International Studies Association (BISA) at Newcastle University.
March 2022
Cristina Stefan was invited by the United Nations Association of Sweden (UNA-Sweden) and the Nordic Institute for African Studies to participate in the Expert Planning Workshop on Atrocity Prevention and Sweden’s Challenges in Promoting it at the UN, in Stockholm, Sweden. Cristina presented her research on how the UN engages with protection norms, such as the Responsibility to Protect, Protection of Civilians and Atrocity Prevention, which relates to her contribution to the broader PROTEX’s research which focuses on the UN as the institutional locus for putting protection norms into practice. The workshop included exchanges with academics, policymakers, and Swedish diplomats.
Cristina also attended the International Studies Association Annual Conference, with a presentation of a paper co-authored with Ingvild Bode titled Women Permanent Representatives at the United Nations.
December 2021
Sofie Rose began a research stay at Tampere University in Finland which lasted until April 2022.
September 2021
Sofie Rose presented the research paper Bandits and Prostitutes: The Role of Gender in the Stigmatization of Former Child Soldiers at the Danish Political Science Association (DPSA) in Nyborg. She also presented the paper Stigmatization and Social Death of Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence to DPSA in Vejle.
June 2021
Chiara de Franco participated in the EWIS workshop Status Symbols in World Politics led by Paul Beaumont and Pål Røren. She presented a paper co-authored with Linnéa Gelot and titled Contesting governmentality: on the struggles of the AU-EU strategic partnership.
April 2021
- De Franco, C., and Cristina Stefan. Embedding norms in human protection practices: A comparative study of UN and EU approaches.
- De Franco, C., and Linnéa Gelot. Performance on Human Rights Standards: Practice-oriented Analysis of AU and EU Peacebuilders.
April 2021
Cristina Stefan’s research on the prevention of, and protection from, atrocity crimes was recognized under the “World Changer” Distinction by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds in 2021. Cristina was one of only 13 academics from across all disciplines at the University of Leeds to receive the “World Changer” distinction in recognition for excellence in impactful research. In her particular case focus was on how norms related to atrocity prevention and responsible civilian protection are implemented at the United Nations.
March 2021
Cristina Stefan was invited to an expert panel on European Perspectives on Taking Forward the UN75 Declaration: From Reflection to Innovation & Action, an event organized by the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, Stimson Center, the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS), and Platforma CIPÓ in New York, USA. Her presentation focused on the Humanitarian action within the UN’s peace and security agenda.
September 2020
Sofie Rose presented early drafts of the research plan for her PhD dissertation to the Danish Political Science Association (DPSA) online.
March 2020
The outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic has set its mark on our research. Planned events have been canceled and fieldwork has been postponed.
Chiara De Franco’s stay in Brussels was intended to last until May, but she had to cut it short and return to Denmark in late March.
Chiara De Franco and Cristina Stefan should have attended the 2020 International Studies Association Convention in Honolulu 25-28 March 2020, which was cancelled. Here, they would have presented a co-authored paper titled ‘Embedding norms in human protection practices: a comparative study of UN and EU approaches.’ The even would have taken place on Thursday, March 26, 8:00 AM – 9:45 AM, T959 Parlor, Tapa Tower, Hilton Hawaiian Village.
March 2020
Sofie Rose attended the Annual meeting for the Danish Peace Movement in Aarhus. She gave a talk on sexual violence in the context of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
February 2020
January 2020
Chiara de Franco started fieldwork in Brussels, where she will stay for four months to conduct research on EU’s practices of civilian protection. In this period, she is also affiliated to the Egmont Institute as a visiting fellow.
November 2019
Linnea Gelot has presented a paper jointly written with Chiara De Franco at a workshop on the Protection of Civilians organized by the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA) in Entebbe, Uganda on 5 November 2019. The paper was titled ‘Governing territories through practices of protection: AU and EU in Somalia.