Dr Edward Stoddard is Professor of International Security at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He is also an Affiliated Researcher at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, and was an EU Marie Curie Research Fellow in Armed Conflict Studies there between 2018 and 2020. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin (2014–15).
He is a specialist in contemporary armed conflicts, particularly focusing on the warfare practices of 1) non-state armed groups and 2) authoritarian states. His research today focuses primarily on conflicts in West Africa, especially those involving so-called “jihadist” groups, though in the past he has also researched conflicts in Iraq/Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. In addition to the above, he has a strong research interest in AI (especially agentic AI and security/conflict research) and open-source intelligence (OSINT)/investigative research methods.