Dr Mateja Peter joined the School of International Relations in September 2015. She currently acts as the Executive Director of the Scottish Council on Global Affairs – the first all-Scotland global affairs institute – and a Research Lead on the PeaceRep Global Fragmentation project.

Dr Peter previously worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and held post-doctoral fellowships at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), and the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS). She received her PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge.

Dr Peter’s research explores the role of third-party interveners (states and international organisations) in contemporary peace processes and post-conflict reconstruction. She studies theoretical and policy implications of sustained international interventions in the post-Cold War era (the so-called liberal statebuilding) and the subsequent pushback against liberal interventions.

Her work is driven by two overarching theoretical questions: (1) how international missions on the ground develop their independence and authority, and (2) what impact the decline of the liberal international order has had on conflict management practices and norms. As a trained qualitative scholar, Dr Peter predominantly uses archival research and fieldwork, but she frequently collaborates with quantitative scholars and data scientists to advance our understanding of conflict management practices.

Dr Peter is currently working on a book on international authority in statebuilding. She is interested in how international missions tasked to administer states emerging out of civil wars establish their authority not just vis-à-vis the host state, but also their international underwriters. The book project focuses on the statebuilding mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2015-2023), with her previous publications exploring missions in Kosovo, Timor-Leste, and South Sudan.

She also researchers on how the changing global order is impacting conflict management practices and norms, from UN peacekeeping to international mediation. This work intersects with Dr Peter’s policy engagement. Having previously provided research support for the work of the UN High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, she now acts as a research lead on a multi-partner Global Fragmentation project, conducted by the PeaceRep consortium and funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). She is working with an interdisciplinary team at Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh rethinking policy ideas around contemporary international mediation. As part of the project, the team is building a novel dataset of third-party mediators and devising interactive visualisation tools for researchers and practitioners.

Dr Peter also researches on the ethics of doing fieldwork in areas of international intervention.

Dr Peter welcomes inquiries from potential PhD students with research interests in the above areas.

Dr Peter is currently not teaching on undergraduate and graduate modules. Reflecting her research interests, her teaching normally covers topics in international law, international organisations, global governance, and conflict and intervention.