Syed Mansoob Murshed was the first holder of the prestigious rotating Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity in the Netherlands for year 2002-003. He was a Research Fellow at United Nations University/WIDER in Helsinki where he ran Projects on Globalisation and Vulnerable Economies and Why Some Countries Avoid Conflict, While Others Fail. He also ran a project on The Two Economies of Ireland, financed by the International Fund for Ireland at the Northern Ireland Economic Research Centre (NIERC), Belfast. He is the author of eight books and over 150 refereed journal papers and book chapters.

His latest book published in 2010 is Explaining Civil War (Edward Elgar). He is on the Editorial boards of several journals including, the European Journal of Development Research, Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy (PEPS), as well as Civil Wars. His research interests are in the economics of conflict, resource abundance, aid conditionality, political economy, macroeconomics and international economics. He has been a writer of background papers for flagship annual reports various UN agencies, the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

I believe I have a truly international reputation in the economics of conflict. The focus is on conflict in developing countries, and its relation to undevelopment. My work includes analytical models about the economic motivation in the process of conflict, the role of natural resource rents, the breakdown of social contract/state failure, and the difficulties in archiving lasting peaceful agreements. My work on the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, various Indonesion conflicts and in Africa in general is widely cited. I am interested in identity and conflict, in the context of behavioural economics, especially Islamophobia in the West and the interaction between fear of Muslim migrants and hatred felt by certain Muslim migrant groups in the West. Another area of interests is in the Liberal Peace, and how international trade or a common democratic orientation cam abate conflict. I also work on the effect of conflict on fiscal capacity, inward investment and financial development. Currently I am working on a research project on food insecurity and conflict. 

I am also internationally known for my work on the natural resource curse in developing countries. I am also interested in the determinants of social protection expenditure in developing countries.