Postdoctoral researcher working on the political economy of armed conflicts
Taxation – Social Policy – Redistribution – Economic Justice

Since early 2022, I am engaged as a postdoctoral researcher at the Global Dynamics of Social Policy project (CRC 1342) at Bremen University, where my work focuses on uncovering the effects of contemporary armed conflicts on social policy regimes.
As a Phd student at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy), my research focused on fiscal politics in war-affected countries, with a particular emphasis on issues of taxation, redistribution, and economic justice. I defended my thesis “Making the Rich Pay for the War: the politics of fiscal fairness in contemporary conflict-affected states” in November 2021. Since 2018, I have also been a member of the PRIO Research School on Peace and Conflict.
I started my academic career in the field of Peace and Conflict studies at Lund university, Sweden, where, after earning my bachelors diploma, I continued to achieve a master’s degree in Political Science, by which I continued my specialisation on the intersection of politics and economics in low- and middle-income countries. My master’s thesis on post-conflict taxation was awarded the Ohlin prize (Stockholm School of Economics) for best thesis of 2016.
Applying both qualitative and quantitative methods, I aim to extend rigorous and empirically well-based analysis also to contexts where data collection is a messy endeavour. In addition to the generally global scope of my research on political economy and economic justice, I take a special interest – academic as well as personal – in the Middle East, where I have spent time studying Arabic and the politics of the region.
Email: jfrizell@uni-bremen.de
