SGRI Best Paper Prize awarded to two F4F researchers
Two F4F researchers have recently won an award for the best paper presented at the annual SGRI Conference (the Standing Group on International Relations) of the Italian Political Science Association (SISP).
The SGRI Best Paper Award was established last year to recognise excellence in research and to reward the most significant contribution to the annual SGRI Conference.
At the recent SISP Conference in Trieste, Simone Papale (Postdoctoral Research Fellow in International Relations) and Emanuele Castelli (Associate Professor of Political Science) received the award for a paper presented at the 2024 SGRI Conference (Parma, 20-21 June 2024) titled The Use of Food by Terrorist Groups: Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa.
Here is the news on the SGRI website.
According to the Committee that awarded the prize, Papale and Castelli’s contribution was deemed the best (ex aequo) among over 60 papers presented at the Conference of Italian International Relations scholars.
The reasons for the award are as follows:
The paper analyses the relationship between food and terrorist insurgencies in the Western and Eastern regions of Africa. By exploring whether and how terrorists’ groups employ food resources and react to food security conditions, the paper provides a valuable insight into the strategies of promoting mobilization
against some pivotal African states. In particular, the paper shows how food weaponization and resource mobilization are used by two of the most prominent Islamist organizations operating in Africa, respectively Both Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab. Through the comparative analysis of how food is both a weapon and a
resource for these two terrorist groups during insurgencies, the paper shows that both Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab have used food as a weapon to achieve tactical and strategic goals in the fight against state forces, while in both cases the deterioration of food security has had considerable repercussions in the last decade, decreasing the resources available to sustain mobilization within the population.
The work provides a significant set of empirical and theoretical contributions to the literature in at least four ways:
(i) contributing to the literature on food security, conflict and terrorism;
(ii) identifying the conditions for more comprehensive counter-terrorism measures elevating nourishment to a key component of security interventions;
(iii) shedding light on the use of food by terrorist organizations and the influence that local food landscapes have on their activities;
(iv) contributing to the international relations debate on how development cooperation may increase efforts to acknowledge and identify potential vulnerabilities of global South countries.
Based on an original conceptual framework and based on rigorous research findings, the paper also points to promote international advocacy for food security and best practices of global policy on food security.
The awarding committee considers the paper worth receiving a special recognition for its contribution to a lively theoretical debate, by means of a rigorous empirical and original analysis.