Francisco J. Lara Jr.
Francisco J. Lara Jr. is a Professor at the University of the Philippines and Senior Peace and Conflict Adviser to International Alert UK. He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of the Philippines, and both an MSc and PhD in International Development from the London School of Economics.
He was a research associate at the LSE Crisis States Research Centre (2006-2011); taught classes at the LSE Development Studies Institute (2006-2008); and wrote on political economy issues in Indonesia and the Philippines for the LSE-IDEAS Emerging Markets Bulletin from 2007-2009.
He has written extensively on agrarian reform, food security, violent conflict, and political settlements. He was chief editor and writer of the methodology chapter in a book on Mindanao’s shadow economies and their links to conflict and poverty entitled Out of the Shadows: Violent Conflict and the Real Economy of Mindanao (Ateneo de Manila University Press) which won the National Book Award in the Social Sciences in 2017. He is also the author of Insurgents, Clans, and States: Political Legitimacy and Resurgent Conflict in Muslim Mindanao (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2014).
In 2021, Lara and Niki Dela Rosa co-wrote a chapter on qualitative research methodologies in the study of smuggling and illicit cross-border trade for the Routledge Handbook of Smuggling (Routledge, 2021). Lara and Dela Rosa also teamed up to edit a volume that presents data from a 10-years panel on violent conflict in the war-stricken Bangsamoro region in the southern Philippines island of Mindanao (International Alert Philippines (2022) Conflict’s Long Game: A Decade of Violence in the Bangsamoro).
