Insurgencies; Agrarian Conflict; Social Mobilisation; State-building; Rebel Governance; Latin America; Colombia
Biography
Dr. José Antonio Gutiérrez is a Research Fellow affiliated with the Institute for International Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction. He defended his PhD thesis on “Insurgent Institutions: Refractory communities, armed insurgency and institution-building in the Colombian conflict” in January 2019, at University College Dublin. His ethnographic research explores social fabric and institution-building in insurgency controlled areas, questioning some assumptions of the sociological theories on State-building and warfare by emphasising the importance of micro-sociological and inter-personal interactions, of the affective dimensions, and of understanding the process of rebel governance institution-building as a sui generis process which needs to be seen on its own terms. His doctoral research was kindly funded by the Andrew Grene Scholarship of the Irish Research Council and the Conflict Resolution Unit of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Government of Ireland (GOIPG/2015/2479).
In 2014 he was research assistant on the Historical Commission of the Conflict and its Victims in Colombia, in the context of the peace negotiations between the FARC-EP rebels and the Government of Colombia. He has extensive experience working on conflict, illicit economies, and contentious politics in Colombia, and has carried qualitative projects in Kenya and Indonesia as well. He has also lectured in the MPhil in Race, Ethnicity and Conflict in Trinity College Dublin.