Sarah von Billerbeck, Ph.D.

s.b.k.vonbillerbeck@reading.ac.uk


Lecturer

University of Reading

Year of PhD: 2013

Country: United Kingdom (England)

Research Interests

Peacekeeping

Conflict Processes & War

Legitimacy

United Nations

Post-Conflict Peacebuilding

Peacebuilding

International Organizations

Organization Theory

Local Peacebuilding

Organizational Learning

Organizational Rules

International Political Sociology

Post-Conflict Transition

Countries of Interest

Congo, Democratic Republic of the (Zaire)

My Research:

My research has two main thrusts: first, UN peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and post-conflict reconstruction; and second, international organizations (IOs), in particular the United Nations, and legitimacy. I recently completed a major project entitled 'Self-Legitimation by International Organizations,' funded by an ESRC Future Research Leaders Award, in which I conducted a comparative study of internal legitimation in the UN, NATO, and the World Bank (2016-19). One of the resulting publications won the best research output prize at the University of Reading in 2020, and I am conducting further follow-up research on IO self-legitimation. I am also co-Principal Investigator on a large ESRC-funded project entitled 'Democratization and United Nations Peacebuilding' with Oisín Tansey (King's College London) and Birte Gippert (Liverpool) (November 2018-October 2021). In addition, together with Benjamin Zyla (Ottawa), Katia Coleman (University of British Columbia), and Steffen Eckhard (Universitaet Konstanz), I was awarded partnership development grant by the SSHRCC (Canada) for a project entitled 'Peaceabuilding and Local Knowledge Network' (2020-2023). In 2017-18, I was Principal Investigator of a project examining performance management in international organizations funded by the Folke Bernadotte Academy. I am also interested in banking and peacebuilding, leadership of peace operations, multilateralism and peace operations, and methodological issues in studying the UN. My book on local ownership and UN peacekeeping operations was published by Oxford University Press in December 2016, and I have published widely on peacekeeping/building, IOs, and legitimacy.I previously worked for the UN peacekeeping mission in D.R. Congo (MONUC), the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia in Lebanon, and the American Refugee Committee in Guinea, and I am co-Director of the UN and Global Order Programme, established at the University of Reading in 2017 (see https://research.reading.ac.uk/ungop/). I am a member of the Folke Bernadotte Academy Research Working Groups; a member of the Executive Committee of the International Studies Association's International Organization Section and served as its 2020 Section Program Chair; a Steering Committee Member of OxPeace, University of Oxford; and a Trustee of the Oxford Peace Research Trust. In 2018, I was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and I was an Associate Member of Nuffield College from 2013-19. I was also Reviews Editor of International Peacekeeping from 2015-2020.