Book Launch: Transforming the War on Drugs: Warriors, Victims and Vulnerable Regions with Coeditor Annette Idler

Date: 

Wednesday, December 8, 2021, 3:30pm to 5:00pm


This event is virtual, to register click here.

Speaker: Annette Idler, Visiting Scholar, Weatherhead Scholars Program; Director, Global Security Programme, Pembroke College, Oxford University 
Chair: Melani Cammett, Center Director; Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs, Department of Government, Harvard University; Professor, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Discussant: Peter Andreas, John Hay Professor of International Studies, Brown University

The war on drugs has failed, but consensus in the international drug policy debate on the way forward is missing. Amidst this moment of uncertainty, militarized lenses on the global illicit drug problem continue to neglect the complexity of the causes and consequences that this war is intended to defend or defeat. Challenging conventional thinking in defense and security sectors, Transforming the War on Drugs constitutes the first comprehensive and systematic effort to theoretically, conceptually, and empirically investigate the impacts of the war on drugs.

Annette Idler is the Director of the Global Security Programme and Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, and at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. Dr Idler’s work focuses on the interface of conflict, security, and transnational organized crime. Currently Principal Investigator of the Conflict Platform Project and of CONPEACE, she has conducted extensive fieldwork in and on conflict-affected regions (Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Somalia, Myanmar), including more than 600 interviews with local stakeholders. She is the author of Borderland Battles: Violence, Crime, and Governance at the Edges of Colombia’s War (Oxford University Press, 2019) and has published numerous articles in the field of conflict and organized crime. Dr. Idler also advises governments and international organizations on these subjects and is a regular expert for internationally renowned media outlets. She holds a doctorate from the Department of International Development and St Antony's College, University of Oxford, an MA in International Relations from King’s College London’s Department of War Studies, and a double BA in German-Spanish Studies/International Politics from Complutense University Madrid, Spain, and Regensburg University, Germany.

Presented in collaboration with Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Scholars Program