Vanessa Gottwick Ph.D.

Center for Intelligence and Security Studies (CISS)

vanessa.gottwick@unibw.de

Vanessa Gottwick Ph.D.

Vanessa Gottwick studied political science and sociology (B.A.) at Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg. As part of her degree, she also studied abroad at the Université de Rouen. She obtained her master’s degree in international relations and security from the University of Liverpool. As part of her doctoral degree program at the University of Liverpool, she spent three years as a research associate studying the impact of mercenaries and PMSCs on civil war dynamics, a project that was funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. Her doctoral thesis will examine the transnational dynamics of internal conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa. Her other main areas of research include the causes of civil wars, transnational and regional conflict dynamics, and mercenaries and private military and security firms.

She has been working as a research associate at the Center for Crisis Early Warning (CCEW) at University of the Bundeswehr Munich since April 2021.