Anna Kreikemeyer

Dr. Anna Kreikemeyer serves as a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy (IFSH) at the University of Hamburg, leading the Local Peace in Central Eurasia: Peacebuilding in Customary Law and Patronal Contexts project since 2023. She founded the international Local Ordering and Peace network in 2020 and co-established the Eurasia Peace Studies Exchange with Norway's Centre for Peace Studies and universities in Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and Ukraine, funded by the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Education (CICED).

Her academic foundation includes a PhD from the University of Hamburg on Russia's Capacity for Peace, research affiliation with the German Society for Foreign Relations (DGAP), a Volkswagen Foundation scholarship in the Eastern Europe postgraduate program at the Free University of Berlin, and studies at Erlangen and Zurich universities.

Kreikemeyer's research critically examines the post-liberal crisis in peacebuilding through Eurasian perspectives, focusing on non-Western local peace formation. She investigates how indigenous actors—elders, women, local NGOs, and journalists—resolve conflicts without external intervention, challenging Western-centric models. Her work emphasizes customary law and patronal systems as sustainable conflict-resolution frameworks, directly informing academic debates on international intervention efficacy.

Analysis of her publications reveals a consistent trajectory toward decentering Eurocentric peace paradigms, with recent work (2018-2022) dissecting hybrid governance and local ordering mechanisms in Central Eurasia. She identifies recurring patterns where customary orders coexist with or resist international organizational frameworks, exposing limitations in conventional peacebuilding approaches.

Her leadership in CICED-funded Eurasia Peace Studies Exchange and Volkswagen Foundation-supported research demonstrates sustained grant acquisition capacity. Kreikemeyer actively cultivates transnational academic partnerships, facilitating knowledge exchange between European and Eurasian institutions to reshape peace studies discourse.

She directs the Local Peace in Central Eurasia project while coordinating the Local Ordering and Peace network, assembling interdisciplinary teams across Germany, Norway, and Central Asia to document indigenous peace practices and challenge intervention orthodoxy.