Solange Fontana

I am a visiting student PhD student from the department of international development, University of Oxford, and I am currently writing up from Amsterdam, where I live. I hold an MPhil in African Studies and look forwards to being part of an Africa-focused Studies Centre for a time. Initial training as a medieval linguist sparked an early love of social history. This, along with experience as an aid worker in conflict and post-conflict settings influenced my choice of research topic and orientation. My PhD project examines the relationship between society and recurrent violence. Institutions, and the networks people use to negotiate daily life, provide the entry point to explore social change, and the emergence and evolution of key social processes. I consider how these interact with violence over time, and how they influence escalations, de-escalations and local patterns of violence. I base my analysis on a detailed, mixed-methods case study of central Masisi, a rural area of eastern Congo considered the epicentre of thirty years of recurrent violence. Though based on a single case, the study highlights how local social dynamics interact with macro drivers of conflict, and touches on broader questions of ‘resilience’ in conflict; the meaning of civil society in such contexts, and the complex relationship between mobility, aspirations, social change and violence.