Tuesday 24 June 2025
London
This panel examined how trust is renegotiated in the aftermath of violence and trauma, and what legitimacy looks like when institutions and promises are fragile. Drawing on XCEPT research across West Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America, speakers explored how communities fill gaps left by the state and how these roles evolve over time. The discussion surfaced tensions and contradictions in efforts to reimagine belonging and navigate hybrid systems of authority, highlighting how trust and legitimacy are contested and reconfigured in conflict-affected societies.
Listen to the full panel session
Speaker insight: Fiona Mc Ewen and Nafees Hamid
Speaker insight: Daniel Agbiboa
Panellists:
Azeema Cheema – Verso Consulting
Azeema Cheema is a Founding Director at Verso Consulting where she leads the portfolio on Conflict, Fragility and Violence. Azeema has fifteen years of development sector experience. In addition to long-term positions with ADB and IRI, she has consulted for a range of multilateral, bilateral, and civil society organisations. She specialises in applied political economy and conflict sensitivity for complex programs. As a co-creator of the Mass Anxieties Project Azeema focuses on the discourse of violence and non-violence in social movements and developing communications frameworks to assist peace building. She has previously served as a Visiting Faculty member in public policy at the National Defence University and presently at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. Azeema is a Research Lead for XCEPT, and currently leads research in Pakistan under the X-Border Local Research Network on fragility in local market systems and conflict dynamics in borderland communities along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Craig Larkin – King’s College London
Craig Larkin is a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics of the Middle East and Deputy Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies at King’s College London. Prior to joining King’s he was an ESRC Postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Politics, University of Exeter. Craig holds a PhD in Middle East Studies from the University of Exeter (Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, 2009), an MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice (LLM, 1999) and a BA(Hons) in Law and Politics (LLB, 1998) from Queen’s University Belfast. He also studied Arabic at Damascus University (2002-2004) and worked in community development projects in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. He is the author of Memory and Conflict in Lebanon: remembering and forgetting the past (Routledge: London and NY, 2012); co-author of The Struggle for Jerusalem’s Holy Places (Routledge: London and NY, 2013) and co-editor of The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant with Michael Kerr (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2015). He has also written articles and book chapters on memory and violence, urban geopolitics, Islamist movements and post-conflict politics. His current book project is examining the Islamic movement inside Israel for which he was awarded a British Academy and Leverhulme grant. Craig Larkin is a Research Lead on Memory and Conflict for the XCEPT consortium.
Daniel Agbiboa – Harvard University
Daniel E. Agbiboa is Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, where he also serves as Faculty Associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Affiliate Faculty of the Bloomberg Center for Cities and Co-Chair of the Urban Conversation Series in the Mahindra Humanities Center. He is also an Executive Committee Member of the Harvard Center for African Studies (CAS) and an Advisory Board Member of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative. He was previously Assistant Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University and Perry World House Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned a DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford (St. Antony’s College), where he was a Queen Elizabeth House Scholar, and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge (Magdalene College), as a Cecil Renaud Scholar.
Nafees Hamid – King’s College London
Dr Nafees Hamid is the Co-PI / Research & Policy Director of XCEPT at King’s College London, based out of the Centre for Statecraft and National Security (CSNS). He is a cognitive scientist of political violence and social fragmentation. He conducts neuroscience, psychology, and qualitative fieldwork with members and supporters of extremist and armed groups. The research he has collaborated on has spanned Western Europe, the Balkans, Morocco, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, South Sudan, and Colombia. His work has informed policies and practices in counter-terrorism; countering violent extremism; strategic communication; Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration; and peace mediation and negotiation practices.
Moderator:
Fiona McEwen – King’s College London
Dr Fiona McEwen is the XCEPT Survey Director. She is based at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), King’s College London, and is also affiliated with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, and Queen Mary University of London. Dr McEwen’s background is in developmental psychology, mental health, and neuroscience. Her research focuses on mental health in war-affected and displaced populations, including evaluation of psychological interventions, and how culture and the context of displacement impact assessment, treatment, and prognosis of mental health problems. She has also carried out research on neurodevelopmental conditions, including evaluating screening and diagnostic tools for autism and associated mental health conditions. Dr McEwen is a member of the INEE Measurement Library Reference Group, which aims to improve the measurement of educational, health, protection, and well-being outcomes in children and young people in emergency contexts.