Dr Marika Sosnowski

Marika Sosnowski is an Australian-qualified lawyer, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Melbourne Law School and a Research Associate at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg. She works as a legal anthropologist with primary research interests in the fields of critical security studies (mainly ceasefires), local/rebel governance and legal systems (particularly issues around citizenship and belonging).

From June 2023 until May 2026 she is based in the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at Melbourne Law School working on a postdoctoral project which examines the legal after-life of war and revolution. The project aims to better understand how people internalise and experience the law at an everyday level after mass violence or world-shaping events. Outputs for this project includes a creative non-fiction book, various academic journal and public-facing articles (including a piece shortlisted for the 2024 Melbourne Writers Prize) as well as a podcast.

Marika's academic work has been published in Citizenship Studies, International Studies Quarterly, the Leiden Journal of International Law and Civil Wars among others. Her first book Redefining Ceasefires: Wartime Order and Statebuilding in Syria came out in June 2023 with Cambridge University Press. For this book, and other associated work, she was unanimously awarded the University of Melbourne's prestigious 2024 Woodward Medal in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. The Selection Committee commended the 'academic rigour, ethical engagement and depth of research' Marika has brought to peacebuilding with these works.

She has also published a range of more public-facing work including for AllegraLab, al Jumhuriya, Middle East Eye, the Lieber Institute West Point, The Conversation, The Atlantic Council and the Washington Institute.