Dylan O’Driscoll is a research associate at the Humanitarian Conflict Response Institute of the University of Manchester, where he works in the Evidence and Knowledge for Development program. His main research interest is ethnosectarian conflict in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, where he has spent two years conducting fieldwork. He has a Ph.D. in ethnopolitics from the University of Exeter, where his thesis examined Kirkuk within the wider issues of conflict and governance in Iraq. O’Driscoll also holds an MA in Kurdish Studies from the University of Exeter.
O’Driscoll’s current research examines the factors that led to the rise of the Islamic State and the policies that are required to counteract this. It is to discuss the post-Islamic state period in Iraq that Diwan met with O’Driscoll when he was in Beirut in early February for a Carnegie roundtable on post-conflict reconstruction.
