Lotje de Vries

Dr. Lotje de Vries is an Associate Professor at Wageningen University's Sociology of Development and Change Group. Her research focuses on the intersection of development, crisis, and area studies, particularly examining how social dynamics, transnational politics, and global developments interact in politically unstable regions like the Central African Republic, Sahel, and South Sudan. She explores security/insecurity dynamics, state-citizen relations, and marginalized communities' agency.

• Education: PhD in Development Sociology from Wageningen University (2012), background at Leiden University's African Studies Centre.
• Previous Roles: Postdoctoral Fellow at GIGA (Hamburg), Researcher at Radboud University's CICAM, and fieldwork with Senegal's Enda Diapol.

Her work critiques methodological blind spots in conflict research, emphasizing how 'inner' and 'outer' circles shape perceptions of insecurity. She teaches courses on conflict, disaster studies, and political sociology, supervising master's theses on topics like governance, migration, and resource conflicts.

Current projects include investigating 'Everyday Statehood at the Geopolitical Margin' to understand social stability in chronic crisis zones.