Author: G E

Student Fellowships – Apply to have an RPA funded Student Fellow (RA) work on your research project. Starting September 2026

Could you use a bachelor-level student assistant for your research on conflict and violence? The Research Priority Area (RPA) Conflict and Society facilitates bachelor’s student research assistance on projects of FMG researchers. We offer fellowships of €1,000 per year per bachelor student research assistant, which corresponds to about 53 hours of work (€19 per hour) per student.

The RPA’s aim with the Student Fellowships is to bring students from all backgrounds into contact with academic research. To that end, we prefer to advertise positions to students through an open call and actively prioritise applicants from underrepresented groups in academia, such as first-generation-university students and students from minority backgrounds.

Interested in having an RPA funded RA on your project?

Please send us a short project description (around 100–150 words). Please highlight the tasks of the research assistant and any requirements for the RA. If applicable, also include a short statement on ethics.

The Student Fellowships are open to all bachelor students from the FMG, 2nd year and up. Project leaders decide whom to hire.

Apply before August 28^th, 2026, via this link: RPA Conflict & Society Student Fellowship Project  

For questions, send us an email at edu-rpa-conflictsociety-fmg@uva.nl.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach 

Lunch Talk by Ronay Bakan, organized by ACCS and the RPA Conflict & Society

Date 12 March 2026 | Time12:00 -13:30 | Location Roeterseilandcampus – Room B3.05

Emerging technologies of war and counterinsurgency increasingly target urban landscapes, populations, and infrastructures. This talk will explore the role of the built environment in counterinsurgency campaigns. Dr. Bakan will address questions such as: Why do states expend the time and resources to engage in developmental projects targeting urban spaces in the midst of counterinsurgency campaigns? What is the spectrum of tactics so used? How do inhabitants whose self-identity is shaped, in part, through attachments to urban landscapes conceive, adopt, or repurpose the land-heritage-military nexus in the everyday?

Focusing on the civil war between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Turkish state, Dr. Bakan argues that states intervene in the everyday environment of ostensibly unruly populations as part of a broader security strategy to prevent future insurgent formation. She terms this set of processes “counterinsurgent urbanism.”

She identifies three core mechanisms of counterinsurgent urbanism: legal-institutional restructuring of land; policing of the urban landscape; and selective development. Her research draws on a multi-method approach that includes urban ethnography, in-depth interviews, neighbourhood mapping, photography, tourism surveys, and archival research to demonstrate how everyday, non-spectacular forms of violence operate in global counterinsurgencies.

This talk is co-organised by the Amsterdam Centre for Conflict Studies (ACCS) and the RPA Conflict & Society.

About the speaker

Dr. Ronay Bakan is currently a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute and incoming Assistant Professor at Fordham University/USA. She works on Kurdish insurgency and Turkey’s urban policies of counter-insurgent action.