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Knowledge on con ict-a ected areas is becoming increasingly important for scholarship and policy. This article identi es a recent change in knowledge production regarding 'zones of danger', attributing it not only to the external environment, but also to an on- going process of securitisation of research resulting from institutional and disciplinary practices. Research is increasingly framed by security concerns and is becoming a security concern in itself, although the implications are not readily acknowledged. To illustrate these developments, we draw on eldwork in Mali and Darfur

This article explores the nexus between conflicting geopolitical imaginaries and socioeconomic tensions in northern Mali, examining microlevel processes whereby extralegal and criminal economies have reshaped political and armed mobilization, especially among Tuareg who fought to draw the borders of an independent Azawad and jihadists affiliated with the MUJAO Islamist group who sought to abolish all borders. Secessionist, jihadist, and statist political projects must be interpreted in light of the dynamics of armed protection, extraction, and clientelist connivance underlying processes of territorialization and social mobility in a hybrid regional order whose peripheral location no longer serves as a geopolitical insulator