Department of Politics and International Relations
Thesis Title: The Mujahideen: A Study of Combatant Motives in Afghanistan, 1978-2005
About
Michael Vinay Bhatia ’99, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, is a visiting fellow. He was awarded a George C. Marshall Scholarship in 2001 and a Scoville Peace Fellowship in 2000 supporting residence at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, DC.
His dissertation is titled The Mujahideen: A Study of Combatant Motives in Afghanistan, 1978-2005, which is based on 350 interviews with combatants throughout Afghanistan, as well as archival and media research. He has conducted research in Afghanistan for the Overseas Development Institute, the Small Arms Survey, the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, the UK Department for International Development (via the International Policy Institute, King’s College, London), and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He has also done humanitarian work and research in the Sahrawi refugee camps, East Timor, and Kosovo. Before coming to the Institute, Bhatia was a sessional lecturer on the causes of war in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa.
Bhatia is the author of War and Intervention: Issues for Contemporary Peace Operations (Kumarian Press, 2003); co-author of Afghanistan, Arms and Conflict (Routledge, forthcoming); and of articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Global Governance, Review of African Political Economy, The International Journal of Refugee Law, International Peacekeeping, and Middle East Policy. He was the guest editor of The Third World Quarterly Special Issue “The Politics of Naming: Rebels, Terrorists, Criminals, Bandits and Subversives,” which will be released as Terrorism and the Politics of Naming in 2007. He received his MSc in international relations research from the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford; and his BA, magna cum laude and honors, in international relations from Brown University.
Research Interests: conflict analysis; humanitarian action; American defence policy; UN peace operations; disarmament, demobilization and reintegration; security sector reform; military strategy
