Dr Yvan Guichaoua is a senior lecturer at the University of Kent and convenor of the MA in International Conflict and Security. Prior to this, Yvan was a lecturer in International Politics at the University of East Anglia. He is also a former teaching fellow at Yale University and a research officer at the University of Oxford. His focus is on the dynamics of insurgency formation, rebel governance and state responses in Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Niger since 2004. Since 2007, Yvan Guichaoua has been studying Tuareg’s recurring rebellions in Niger and Mali and the rise of Jihadism in the Sahel. His works pay close attention to the complex interactions between violent entrepreneurs, low-level combatants and civilian populations shaping the success or failure of irregular armed groups as well as the forms of violence they perpetrate. His latest work concerns state and international responses to irregular militancy. Yvan engages regularly with the policymaking community and is frequently consulted by the media on the Sahelian crisis.