Carina Franco

Research Associate
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Ana Carina Santos Franco (Carina Franco) is a researcher and analyst with extensive professional experience in Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. She has over a decade of experience as an expert on peace and conflict, security, democratic governance and forced migration with international organisations (European Union, United Nations), having conducted numerous assignments consisting of evaluation, analysis and policy-oriented research. She is also a former humanitarian worker (with international NGOs) and a crisis management professional through her previous work in the analysis and reporting unit of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy mission in Somalia.

A former PhD fellow at IPRI-NOVA, she was awarded a PhD in International Relations by NOVA University of Lisbon in 2025. Her doctoral thesis focused on European Union’s external action in peacebuilding and state-building in Africa through a comparative study between Somali and Mali. Carina holds a university degree in Political Science and International Relations from the NOVA University of Lisbon (Portugal) and SciencesPo – Paris (France), as well as a research master’s degree in International Relations from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium).

She has been an invited lecturer at academic institutions, speaker at scientific events and author of peer-reviewed publications on topics related to peace and conflict studies, statebuilding, security assistance and external interventions.

Research Fields:

Peace and Conflict Studies.

EU Foreign Policy.

Area Studies.

Africa.

Afghanistan.

Western Asia. 

Recent Publications:

1.Book review - “A promoção da segurança humana na (zona cinzenta da) estabilização”, Relações Internacionais, 2023: https://doi.org/10.23906/ri2023.80r02; “Human security promotion in (the grey area of) stabilization”, Relações Internacionais, Special Issue 2023: https://doi.org/10.23906/ri2023.br03

2. Book review - “Are Borderlands More Violent? A Spatial Analysis of Border (Dis) Orders in North and West Africa”, Journal of Borderlands Studies, 2023: DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2023.2249929

3. Article (co-author) - “Response to the Somali and Malian Jihadist Movements: What Lessons for Mozambique?”, in Political Observer - Revista Portuguesa de Ciência Política, 2022: DOI: 10.33167/2184-2078.RPCP2022.17/pp.91-105

4. Book review - “On Statehood and Sovereignty: Towards a Critical Appraisal of State Formation and International Statebuilding”, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2022: https://doi.org/10.1080/17502977.2022.2090141

5. Article - “External interventions in Mali and its borderlands - a case for stabilisation”, Janus.net, e-journal of international relations, vol.12, n. 2, 2021: https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.12.2.6