Dr Anicée Van Engeland’s background and expertise has been instrumental in supporting the Defence Academy’s International Section with the Managing Defence in the Wider Security Context (MDWSC) (Export) courses.
Joining the Defence Academy’s academic partner, Cranfield University in 2016 as a senior lecturer, Dr Van Engeland has since promoted to associate professor, using her research on law and governance to look at ways of enhancing the respect for universal human rights law, globally.
Besides doing desk-based research, through the support of research grants, Dr Van Engeland also travels in person, to gather data through fieldwork.
Since working with the International Section, Dr Van Engeland has travelled to multiple countries to train members of the armed forces, police forces, the judiciary or members of civil society to a variety of legal and politics’ issues. Some of those include:
- constitutional law and human rights law in Ukraine
- human rights law and humanitarian law including the use of force to the Jamaican armed forces and police
- improving the armed forces understanding of policy and strategy-making in Kuwait
- debriefed the role of protests and riots as a crucial element of the social contract in several countries
- collaborate on research contracts with UK MOD and the FCDO
Her work in delivering MDWSC is directly supporting the UK MOD’s Defence Engagement strategy.
In 2021, Dr Anicée was awarded a British Academy grant to further her work on MDWSC. She has since created a whole network of academics based on the ‘Global South’ to give them the opportunity to present their views of what is peace and security.