Fragile Lives 2025

About the conference

Fragile Lives 2025 was the second edition of an annual international expert conference focused on using rigorous, scientific evidence to inform policy interventions in fragile, conflict-affected, and underdeveloped settings. It took place on 30 September and 1 October 2025 at Humboldt University in Berlin. The year’s central theme was:

Gender, Institutions, Fragility

We reviewed the role of gender and institutions in the formation, functioning and impacts of fragility, insecurity, conflict and emergency. Gender is a key lens to understand the heterogeneity of such experiences and allows for the reconition of gender's interaction with other identity factors, such as age, ability, displacement status, or ethnicity.

Keynote Speakers

Patricia Justino

Deputy Director of the United Nations World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)

Patricia Justino is a development economist who works at the interface between Development Economics and Political Science. Patricia is currently Deputy Director at UNU-WIDER, Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Brighton, UK, (on leave) and a Co-Director of the Households in Conflict Network (HiCN). She is a leading expert on political violence and socio-economic development, with her research focusing on the relationship between political violence, institutional transformation, governance, and development outcomes.

Amber Peterman

Multi-country Impact Evaluation Specialist at UNICEF

Amber Peterman is an impact evaluation specialist with a focus on gender, violence, harmful practices & adolescent wellbeing with UNICEF. She is also affiliated with the Transfer Project and the Cash Transfer and Intimate Partner Violence Research Collaborative, and is a Center for Global Development (CGD) non-resident Fellow and a J-PAL affiliate. Her research provides methodological and policy-relevant evidence linking gender and development in resource-poor settings.