Stephen McLoughlin joined the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University in August 2020. Before this he was a senior lecturer in International Relations at Liverpool Hope University. Prior to this post he was a post-doctoral research fellow at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. His research interests include mass atrocity prevention, the role of the UN in conceptualising and carrying out prevention, the causes of genocide and mass atrocities, and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). He is the author of The Structural Prevention of Mass Atrocities (Routledge 2014) and Rethinking Humanitarian Intervention (with Alex Bellamy)(Palgrave 2018, with Alex Bellamy).

Stephen is particularly interested in why it is that mass atrocities do not occur in places where the risk factors associated with such violence are salient. He is also interested in the role that political leaders play in mitigating the risk associated with these crimes. Stephen is a founding member of the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. He has been writing about mass atrocity prevention and pillar one-related issues for more than a decade, and has published extensively in this area.

Stephen’s current research is focussed on two distinct strands. The first is an investigation of the role that leaders play in preventing mass atrocities. The second is an exploration of the ways that local perspectives can shape the structure and content of peace education.

Mass atrocity and conflict prevention, mass atrocity early warning, peace education, peacbuilding, comparative genocide studies