Laura Wise is a Research Associate with the Political Settlements Research Programme. She is part of the team behind the PA-X Peace Agreements Database, a dataset of all peace agreements globally from 1990 to 2021, and a co-creator of PeaceFem, a mobile phone app that illustrates women’s inclusion in peace processes around the world. 

Laura’s research explores the margins of peace processes and conflict-affected societies – including conceptual, spatial and temporal margins, and their intersections with the politics of inclusion. She is particulary interested in multi-level peace processes (especially local), ethnopolitics and non-dominant minorities, ceasefires, and women, peace and security.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Laura has been a Co-Investigator of the PSRP's Covid Collective Research Strand looking at PeaceTech, Tracking Data, and the UN Ceasefire Call. Her latest co-authored Covid-19 report, "Breathing Space: Vaccination Ceasefires in the Context of Covid-19", looks at lessons learned from previous campaigns to vaccinate people in conflict zones, and draws on the new VaxxPaxx Vaccination Ceasefires Dataset. Laura has been tracking responses to the UN Ceasefire Call since March 2020 as a co-creator of the "Ceasefires in a time of Covid-19" interactive tracker.

Her work has been published in various academic journals, policy, and online outlets, including Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Sudosteuropa, British Academy, Transconflict and LSE Women, Peace and Security. She has previously worked as a researcher for the UN Women project 'Enhancing Women’s Leadership for Sustainable Peace in Fragile Contexts in the MENA Region', supporting women engaged in peace processes in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Libya.

Laura holds a BSc Econ in International Politics and the Third World from Aberystwyth University and an MA in Comparative Ethnic Conflict from Queen's University Belfast. She was the 2011/2012 recipient of the International Politics Finalists' Dissertation Prize from Aberystwyth University, for her work 'Moral quandaries of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995'.

• Peace agreements and peace processes
• Minority rights and kin-state politics
• Sub-national political settlements
• Ceasefires
• Southeastern Europe