I have studied public policy and management (Diplom-Verwaltungswissenschaft) with emphasis on international relations at Konstanz University (Germany) and at the I.E.P Aix-en-Provence (France). Furthermore, I hold a postgraduate master’s degree in peace and security studies from IFSH, Hamburg University. I have served as a research assistant and a research associate / program leader at various academic and policy-oriented institutions in Germany such as the Centre for Development Research (ZEFa) Bonn and the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) Flensburg, among others. Currently, I am employed as a teaching fellow (Lehrkraft für besondere Aufgaben) for comparative politics / international relations at the University of Oldenburg. Before Oldenburg, I was a teaching fellow for quantitative methods and statistics at Flensburg University. I am an external PhD candidate at the University of Essex, Department of Government (U.K.). This department was ranked Britain’s top political science department in the last RAE. I received additional methodological training in spatial econometrics, R, Geographic Information Systems, network analysis, qualitative comparative analysis, formal modeling, game theory, mixing methods and case study design at the Universities of Essex, NTNU Trondheim, Zurich, Bremen, Southern Denmark and Flensburg. In the past, I have been a referee for Journal of Peace Research, Conflict Management and Peace Science, International Studies Quarterly and served as a management editor for the European Yearbook of Minority Issues. Professional memberships include the ECPR Standing Groups on Security Issues, Political Geography, Methodology and ISA. Besides my academic career, I worked for a leading market research institute, volunteered for Greenpeace New Zealand and served as reserve officer in the German air force. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with the families’ Labrador retriever and crazy tomcat. >>Download CV<<

My substantive research interests lie at the intersection between international relations and comparative politics, applied to questions of ethnicity, violent conflict and UN peacekeeping. I have a keen interest in closely related topics such as implications of development and democratization processes as well as in theories of nationalism and state-building or -failure, all from a political geography perspective.  

In my PhD thesis, I am dealing with the quantitative study of civil war and ethnic conflict, applied to questions of onset, duration, neighborhood effects and UN intervention. Criticizing much of the earlier macro-statistical work on these topics, I am following a disaggregation strategy. For example, one chapter of my thesis deals with the Bosnian civil war 1992-1995, using geo-coded event data on the spatial variation of different forms of violence as well as on the location of UN peacekeeping activities during that war. The data is analyzed by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial regression techniques. By paying greater attention to the micro-level as well as on potential spatio-geographic linkages among observations, I hope to move a step forward in explaining intrastate conflict dynamics and their policy implications.   

Methodologically, I am interested in statistical and computational techniques that are capable to include not only time but also geographic space, such as spatial econometrics or agent-based modeling. I also have an interest in other "relational" methods such as network analysis. 

I have taught courses at the Universities of Konstanz, Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Flensburg and Oldenburg. Topics included introduction to international relations; foreign policy analysis; current research issues and methods in comparative politics; civil war; interstate war; UN peacekeeping; theories of nationalism; nationalism and ethnic conflict in Europe; globalization and migration; democracy and economic development; empirical social research; methods for political science; research design and research logic; statistics and quantitative methods; statistics I, statistics III; SPSS; and agent-based modeling using NetLogo.

• Tim Dertwinkel (2009). Disaggregated Perspectives on Civil War and Ethnic Conflict: Prospects of an Emerging Research Agenda. Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe 8 (1).

• Tim Dertwinkel (2008). Economic Exclusion of Ethnic Minorities: Indicators and Measurement Considerations. ECMI Issue Brief No. 20.

• Tim Dertwinkel (2008). Economic Exclusion of Ethnic Minorities: On the Importance of Concept Specification. ECMI Issue Brief No. 19.

• John Wrench (2007). Diversity Management and Discrimination. Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities in the EU. European Yearbook of Minority Issues Vol 7, 769-770.

• Jana Keller, Tim Dertwinkel and Bernhard Kittel (2010). One Size Does Not Fit All: A Closer Look at Civil War Types and Duration.
• Tim Dertwinkel (2009). The Effect of Local Peacekeeping on Different Forms of Violence During the Bosnian Civil War. Paper Presented at the Conference on ”Localized Effects and Impacts of Peacekeeping in Civil War”, Department of Government, University of Essex, UK.
• Tim Dertwinkel and Daniel Lambach (2007). Breaking Down Breakdown: Localizing State Failure using GIS. Paper Presented at 48th Annual ISA Convention, Chicago, USA.
• Tim Dertwinkel (2006). Geographical Context and Neighborhood Effects in Civil War: Why Regional Dummies Won't Do the Trick. Paper Presented at Internal Research Conference “Political Order and Violence”, ETH Zurich.
• Tim Dertwinkel, Constanze Kathan and Torsten J. Selck (2005). Advances in Modeling Political Processes. Paper Presented at 3rd ECPR Conference, Budapest, Hungary.
• Torsten J. Selck, Tim Dertwinkel and Constanze Kathan (2005). The Bargaining Success of the Netherlands and Belgium in the EU Policymaking Process.