Dr Stacey Gutkowski is a Reader in Peace and Conflict Studies and a member of the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies at King’s College London. Prior to joining King’s, she was an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex; a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, Arizona State University; and a Research Associate with the Religion and Ethics in the Making of War and Peace Programme, University of Edinburgh.

Stacey holds a PhD in International Studies from the University of Cambridge, an MPhil in International Peace Studies from Trinity College Dublin and a BA in Philosophy (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Wellesley College.

She is the author of two research monographs, Religion, War and Israel’s Secular Millennials: Being Reasonable? (Manchester University Press, 2020) and Secular War: Myths of Religion, Politics and Violence (I.B. Tauris, 2014), as well as articles and book chapters on the relationships among religion, peace and conflict in Jordan, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, the United States, and Britain. She currently leads Templeton Religion Trust’s initiative ‘Social Consequences of Religion’ (SCORE) strand of work on Religion and Peacebuilding. SCORE is poised to be a multi-decade effort to review, synthesise, research and analyse the effects of religious belief, behaviour, and institutions on many crucial domains of human life. Stacey also sits on the Advisory Council for SCORE. She was co-director of the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network (2008-2020) and sat on its Advisory Board (2020-2022). She was a founding co-editor (2015-2023) of the book series Religion and Its Others: Studies in Religion, Nonreligion and Secularity (DeGruyter).

Research interests

Stacey's research is at the crossroads of Middle Eastern Studies, political sociology, religious studies and critical security studies.

Her research interrogates the various relationships between politics, war, peace, religion and the secular. Her distinct contribution has been to analyse intersections between war and the secular.

Further information about her work can be found at: www.staceygutkowski.com

Teaching

• Conflict and Coexistence in Divided Societies (MA)
• Religion and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa (BA)
• Culture, religion and identity in contemporary conflicts (MA)

PhD Supervision

Stacey welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD students with a full proposal available who seek to work in the following areas: grassroots conflict resolution and peacebuilding in the Middle East; secularism in the Middle East; religion, conflict and peacebuilding in the Middle East; faith-based humanitarianism and the Syrian refugee crisis; religious pluralism in the Middle East; intercultural and interfaith dialogue in global affairs; Christianity in the Arab World; Jordan; Israel/Palestine. Further information can be found here.

Publications

• Gutkowski, Stacey. State (non) secularism and religious ambivalence in the Middle East. In The Non-Religious and the State: Seculars Crafting Their Lives (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024).
• Gutkowski, Stacey, Craig Larkin and Michael Kerr. Conflict resolution in deeply divided societies. In An Introduction to War Studies (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024).
• Gutkowski, Stacey. I’m Hopeless But I Still Have Hope: Hiloni Millennial Attitudes to Oslo and Its Aftermath. Israel Studies Review 38, no. 2 (2023): 143-164.
• Gutkowski, Stacey. Moderation as Jordanian Soft Power: Islam and Beyond. In The Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power (Oxford University Press, 2023).
• Gutkowski, Stacey. Playing Host Since 1948: Jordan’s Refugee Policies and Faith-based Charity. The Journal of Middle East and Africa 13, no. 2 (2022): 163-184.
• Gutkowski, Stacey. Civil War Secularity Talk. Religions 13 (2022): 1-21.
• Gutkowski, Stacey. Does Atheism Promote Peace? In Atheism in 5 Minutes (Sheffield: Equinox, 2022).
• Gutkowski, Stacey and Craig Larkin. Spiritual Ambiguity in Interfaith Humanitarianism. Migration Studies 9 (2021).
• Gutkowski, Stacey. Secular Feelings, Settler Feelings: The Case of Palestine/Israel. Religion, State and Society 49, no. 1 (2021): 41-60.
• Gutkowski, Stacey. Religion, War and Israel’s Secular Millennials: Being Reasonable? (Manchester University Press, 2020).
• Gutkowski, Stacey, Craig Larkin and Ana Maria Daou. Religious Pluralism, Interfaith Dialogue and Post-war Lebanon. In Emergent Religious Pluralisms (Palgrave, 2019).
• Gutkowski, Stacey. Jewish atheists in foxholes: existential beliefs and how war feels. Secular Studies 1 (2019): 34-73.
• Gutkowski, Stacey. Secular War: Myths of Religion, Politics and Violence (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2014).

For a full list of publications, please consult the Research Portal at King’s.