Professor Stefan Wolff

Professor Stefan Wolff

Department of Political Science and International Studies
Professor of International Security

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 8230
Fax
+44 (0)121 414 3496
Email
s.wolff@bham.ac.uk
Twitter
@stefwolff
View my research portal
Address
Department of Political Science and International Studies
School of Government
Muirhead Tower
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

A political scientist by background, Stefan Wolff specialises in the management of contemporary security challenges, especially in the prevention and settlement of ethnic conflicts and civil wars and in post-conflict state-building in deeply divided and war-torn societies.

Stefan Wolff Personal Webpage

Feedback and office hours

Mondays 9.30—11.30 and Tuesdays 10.30—11.30 during term time.

Qualifications

  • Erstes Staatsexamen (BA) in German and English, University of Leipzig,1995
  • M.Phil. in Political Thought and Intellectual History, University of Cambridge, 1996
  • Ph.D. in Political Science, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1999

Biography

Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham, England, UK.  A political scientist by background, he specialises in the management of contemporary security challenges, especially in the prevention and settlement of ethnic conflicts and civil wars, and in post-conflict reconstruction, peace-building, and state-building in deeply divided and war-torn societies.  He has extensive expertise in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union, and has also worked on a wide range of other conflicts elsewhere, including the Middle East, Africa, and Central, South and Southeast Asia.  Bridging the divide between academia and policy-making, he has been, and is, involved in various phases of conflict settlement processes, including in Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Moldova, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Kosovo.

Wolff’s publications to date include twenty books and over eighty journal articles and book chapters.  His latest monograph is Subnational Governance and Conflict (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2020, with Simona M. Ross and Asbjorn Wee). Published by Oxford University Press in 2006 (paperback in 2007), Wolff’s Ethnic Conflict: A Global Perspective is the first major treatment of the subject aimed at a broad general audience and has been highly acclaimed by academics, policymakers, and business leaders.  His Ethnopolitical Encyclopaedia of Europe (with Karl Cordell) was published by Palgrave as the first comprehensive analysis of ethnic politics across the European continent in 2004 and has won critical praise from scholars and analysts.  Among his other books are Disputed Territories: The Transnational Dynamics of Ethnic Conflict Settlement (2002); Managing and Settling Ethnic Conflicts (with Ulrich Schneckener, 2004); Peace at Last? The Impact of the Good Friday Agreement on Northern Ireland (with a foreword by Lord Alderdice, with Jörg Neuheiser, 2002), and Autonomy, Self-determination and Conflict Resolution (with Marc Weller, 2005), Ethnic Conflict: Causes—Consequences—Responses (Polity 2009, with Karl Cordell), The European Neighbourhood Policy in Perspective (with Richard Whitman, 2010), the Routledge Handbook on Ethnic Conflict (with Karl Cordell, 2011), Conflict Management in Divided Societies: Theories and Practice (with Christalla Yakinthou, 2011), The European Union as a Conflict Manager (Routledge 2012, with Richard G.Whitman), and The Dynamics of Emerging De-facto States: Eastern Ukraine in the post-Soviet Space (London: Routledge, 2019, with Tetyana Malyarenko). 

Wolff is also the founding editor of Ethnopolitics, a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of ethnic conflicts and their management around the globe. 

Prior to his appointment at Birmingham, he taught at the Universities of Keele, Bath, and Nottingham and has held visiting professorships at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Bologna Center, the Universities of Sofia, Bucharest, Skopje, and Belgrade, and at Humboldt and Free University, Berlin.  He is a Non-resident Fellow of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-determination at Princeton University.  In 2006, Wolff served as Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the UK Defence Academy.  He earned his BA at the University of Leipzig, Germany, and holds a Masters Degree from University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Postgraduate supervision

Research

Research and Academic Interests

Stefan Wolff has a long-standing interest in confidence building in the context of international conflict management. He has worked with the EU, the OSCE, and the UN and UNDP on a number of confidence-building projects in support of peace processes in a diverse range of cases from Kirkuk in Iraq and Yemen, to Cyprus, the Western Balkans, and Moldova.

More information about his research, including details of various projects, as well as all of his publications and a range of policy reports is available from his his personal website.

Comparative Ethnopolitics

  • Ethnic Conflict Settlement, especially institutional design and the contribution by international organisations
  • External Minorities as Sources of Conflict and Cooperation within and between States
  • Democratisation, Minority Rights and Ethnic Conflict
  • Post-conflict Reconstruction and the Stability of Conflict Settlements

State Failure

  • Causes and Dynamics of State Failure
  • Regional Dimensions of State Failure
  • Policy Responses to State Failure

The German Question: Past, Present and Future

  • German Minorities Abroad
  • Ethnic Germans and Their Integration in the Federal Republic
  • The Policies of German Governments towards German Minorities Abroad
  • Expellee Organisations in the Federal Republic

Other activities

Professor Wolff regularly consults to governments and international organisations, particularly on issues of conflict management and resolution. Currently (and for the past several years), one of his main focal points in this respect is conflict resolution in Moldova. In addition, he has been working with the OSCE and the OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions on questions of economic connectivity.

He also writes occasional contributions for The Conversation and a variety of other outlets.

In July 2010, he gave a talk at the TEDGlobal conference on civil wars and ethnic conflict.

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Wolff, S (ed.) 2018, Ethnic Conflict: Critical Concepts in Political Science. Critical Concepts in Political Science, 1st edn, Routledge.

Malyarenko, T & Wolff, S 2018, The Dynamics of Emerging De-Facto States: Eastern Ukraine in the Post-Soviet Space. 1 edn, Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429448409

Article

Fontana, G, Kartsonaki, A, Neudorfer, N & Wolff, S 2024, 'The Multi-Stage Mixed Methods Framework: A New Research Design to Combine Hypothesis Development and Hypothesis Testing and to Embed Machine Learning and Practitioner Engagement in the Social Sciences', International Political Science Review.

Kartsonaki, A & Wolff, S 2023, 'An Impenetrable Knot of Blended Conflicts? The National Identity Constraints of European Integration in the Western Balkans', Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, pp. 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/17502977.2023.2182994

Pushkina, D, Siewert, MB & Wolff, S 2022, 'Mission (im)possible? UN military peacekeeping operations in civil wars', European Journal of International Relations, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 158-186. https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661211046602

Neudorfer, N, Theuerkauf, U & Wolff, S 2022, 'Territorial self-governance and proportional representation: reducing the risk of territory-centred intrastate violence', Territory, Politics, Governance, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 504-526. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2020.1773920

Wolff, S 2020, 'Enhancing the robustness of causal claims based on case study research on conflict zones: observations from fieldwork in Donbas', Nationalities Papers. https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2020.29

Farooq, T, Lucas, S & Wolff, S 2020, 'Predators and Peace: Explaining the Failure of the Pakistani Conflict Settlement Process in 2013-4', Civil Wars, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 26-63. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698249.2020.1704603

Fontana, G, Kartsonaki, A, Neudorfer, N, Walsh, D, Wolff, S & Yakinthou, C 2020, 'The dataset of political agreements in internal conflicts (PAIC)', Conflict Management and Peace Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0738894220944123

Kemoklidze, N & Wolff, S 2019, 'Trade as a confidence-building measure in protracted conflicts: the cases of Georgia and Moldova compared', Eurasian Geography and Economics, pp. 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2019.1702567

Malyarenko, T & Wolff, S 2018, 'The logic of competitive influence-seeking: Russia, Ukraine, and the conflict in Donbas', Post-Soviet Affairs, pp. 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2018.1425083

Csergo, Z, Roseberry, P & Wolff, S 2017, 'Institutional Outcomes of Territorial Contestation: Lessons from Post-Communist Europe, 1989-2012', Publius, vol. 47, no. 4, pp. 491-521. https://doi.org/10.1093/publius/pjx025

Beyer, J & Wolff, S 2016, 'Linkage and leverage effects on Moldova's Transnistria problem', East European Politics, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 335-354. https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2015.1124092

Chapter

Wolff, S & Cordell, K 2016, Consociationalism. in S Wolff & K Cordell (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict: Second Edition. 2nd edn, Routledge, pp. 289-299. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315720425

Editorial

Malyarenko, T & Wolff, S 2021, 'Introduction “belt and road initiative in the South Caucasus and eastern Europe: Trade, policy, regulations”', Lex Portus, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 7-10. https://doi.org/10.26886/2524-101X.7.2.2021.1

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

Foreign, Security and Development Policy

Stefan Wolff is an expert in international conflict management who has worked as advisor on several peace processes, including in Yemen, Iraq, Cyprus, and Moldova. He is also frequently consulting to the UK government, the EU, the OSCE, and the UN.

Other information

Professor Wolff regularly consults to governments and international organisations, particularly on issues of conflict management and resolution. Currently (and for the past several years), one of his main focal points in this respect is conflict resolution in Moldova. In addition, he has been working with the OSCE and the OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions on questions of confidence building in the OSCE region.

He also writes occasional contributions for The Conversation and a variety of other outlets.

In July 2010, he gave a talk at the TEDGlobal conference on civil wars and ethnic conflict.