About
Dr Harry Verhoeven is Senior Advisor at the European Institute of Peace, where he heads the Institute's Political Economy work. He is also the Founder and Convenor of the Oxford University China-Africa Network.
He has particular expertise on the political economy of conflict and climate change and the international relations of water, energy and food security. His regional focus is on Africa, the Middle East and the Western Indian Ocean.
Dr Verhoeven is the author of two monographs: Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan. The Political Economy of Military-Islamist State Building (Cambridge University Press) and Why Comrades Go To War. Liberation Politics and the Outbreak of Africa’s Deadliest Conflict (with Philip Roessler, Oxford University Press/Hurst).
He is the editor of two books: Environmental Politics in the Middle East. Local Struggles, Global Connections (Oxford University Press/Hurst) and Beyond Liberal Order: States, Societies and Markets in the Global Indian Ocean (with Anatol Lieven, Oxford University Press/Hurst). He has also edited the following special issues: Marx and Lenin in Africa and Asia: Socialism(s) and Socialist Legacies (for Third World Quarterly) and Water Security in Africa in the Age of Global Climate Change (for Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences).
Previously, Dr Verhoeven served as Senior Political Counsellor at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and as a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy, School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University. He was also a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Politics and International Studies of the University of Cambridge and at Columbia Business School. He has collaborated extensively with policy actors, including the World Bank, the IMF, the European Union, various agencies of the United Nations, governments in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America and non-governmental organisations. For almost two decades, he has served as an expert witness in litigation pertaining to mass atrocities, development-induced displacement and human rights violations in various African states.
Dr Verhoeven holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA/MA (Licence) from Gent University.