Dr Christine Cheng is Lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Her interest in organized crime is rooted in the political economy of civil wars. Dr Cheng’s research examines post-conflict transitions and how the boundaries between the legal, illegal, and extralegal are negotiated in the aftermath of war. She has regional expertise in West Africa, with a focus on Liberia, and she has also conducted research on Colombia. Dr Cheng is co-editor of Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Selling the Peace? (with Dominik Zaum). Her forthcoming book is entitled Extralegal Groups and Statebuilding in Post-conflict Liberia- How Trade Makes the Modern State(Oxford University Press).

At King’s, Dr Cheng is part of the Conflict, Security, and Development Research Group (CSDRG). She is affiliated with the King’s Centre for Politics, Philosophy, and Law as well as King’s Gender Studies. She also sits on the Governing Council for the Conflict Research Society. Dr Cheng holds a DPhil from Oxford (Nuffield College) and an MPA from Princeton University (Woodrow Wilson School). Previously, she was the Bennett Boskey Fellow in Politics at Exeter College, Oxford, and prior to that, she was the Cadieux-Leger Fellow at Canada’s Ministry of Global Affairs. Dr Cheng is Canadian and she blogs at christinescottcheng.wordpress.com and tweets @cheng_christine.