Adam Baczko

Adam Baczko is a Research Fellow at CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) affiliated with Sciences Po's Center for International Studies (CERI) in Paris. His work focuses on the formation of legal institutions by armed movements in contexts of armed conflict, with particular expertise on Afghanistan and Syria. Baczko has conducted extensive fieldwork in conflict zones across Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, examining how non-state actors establish judicial systems during civil wars.

His research interests include the sociology of civil wars, Taliban tribunals in Afghanistan, armed conflict in Syria, and Western military interventions. Baczko approaches these topics through a comparative lens, analyzing how legal institutions function in multiple conflict settings to identify patterns and variations in how armed movements establish governance structures. His fieldwork methodology emphasizes direct observation and interviews in dangerous environments, which he argues provides epistemological privilege over desk-based research on conflict zones.

Baczko's publications reveal a consistent focus on how legal systems operate in civil wars, particularly examining the Taliban's judicial apparatus in Afghanistan as a case study of how armed movements use law as a strategic tool. His work demonstrates how the Taliban's courts contributed to their eventual victory by providing accessible, reliable justice that contrasted with the failures of the Western-backed government system. His comparative approach extends to Syria, where he has documented similar dynamics of competing legal orders.

• Order, Conflict and Violence Fellow at Yale University
• Visiting Fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menchen (IWM)
• Trajectories of Change Fellow at the Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius

Baczko has been actively involved in the ERC program 'Social Dynamics of Civil Wars' since 2016, working under Gilles Dorronsoro at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. His multilingual capabilities (French, English, Spanish, Polish) facilitate his comparative research across multiple conflict zones. He has been a vocal advocate for the importance of fieldwork in conflict zones despite security challenges, arguing that direct observation provides irreplaceable insights into how civil wars function.