George R. Wilkes

Dr Wilkes directs the Project on Religion and Ethics in the Making of War and Peace (Relwar), which promotes academic-practitioner research collaborations designed to deepen our understanding of the parts played by religious and ethical ideas in addressing conflict. Through Relwar, he has developed long-standing partnerships supporting projects on peacebuilding, human rights, corruption and refugee welfare in East-Central/South-East Europe and the Middle East, and works with networks of educators on failure and innovation in education designed to strengthen military ethics and compliance with International Humanitarian Law. Currently, he is working on a Memory Bank designed to promote the knowledge and use of memories of ordinary, local, interreligious and intercultural solidarities. Dr Wilkes has lectured at Cambridge, Edinburgh, Leuven, Birmingham and Glasgow Universities. He is currently a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the School of Security Studies, Kings College London, an Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Glasgow University, and holds honorary positions at Birmingham and Edinburgh universities. For more on Relwar’s work, see https://relwar.wordpress.com/.

Ongoing research projects

Teaching International Humanitarian Law and Military Ethics
Religion and Peacebuilding: Showing the power of locally-owned social science studies in the Middle East and West Balkans
Religion and Reconciliation in Bosnia-Herzegovina
Memory Bank: Challenges in Gathering Memories of Interreligious Cooperation after Conflict
Corruption in Divided Societies