Dr Florian Weigand is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

His research is concerned with how conflict zones, borderlands and other challenging environments function, and the ways in which they are governed. In these contexts, he is particularly interested in the perspective of non-state actors and marginalised groups, including insurgents, rebels, resistance movements, criminal groups, victims of violent conflict and civil society activists. Further, he works on methodological questions, such as how qualitative data can be collected in areas that are viewed as ‘insecure’. He has conducted research on armed conflict in a number of South Asian and Southeast Asian countries, such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand.

He did his PhD at the LSE, where he explored how different authorities in Afghanistan - such as the Taliban, the government, strongmen and community authorities - construct legitimacy. He also holds an MSc in Development Management from the LSE and an MSc in Global Governance and Diplomacy from the University of Oxford.

As a consultant, he has worked for such organisations as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the World Bank, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Economist Intelligence Unit. Before joining LSE, he worked in different roles and projects for the German development agency GIZ.