Bram Jo De Smet

I have a PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies. I hold a master's degree in International Conflict and Security from the University of Kent.

My PhD dissertation introduced slow erasure as a way to understand how settler-colonial violence works gradually and structurally to undermine Indigenous life, identity, and futures. Instead of focusing on sudden acts of mass killing, he shows how harm accumulates through everyday practices like restricting movement, fragmenting land, suppressing knowledge, and targeting bodies through injury, imprisonment, and control. Grounded in long-term ethnographic work in Palestine, the study illustrates how Zionist settler-colonialism steadily weakens Palestinian presence and possibility, yet also highlights the resilience found in practices of sumud, such as cultural preservation, land cultivation, education, and everyday acts of staying put. By naming slow erasure, the dissertation offers a clearer language for recognising often-ignored forms of violence and contributes to broader conversations on justice, Indigenous survival, and decolonial futures.

My postdoctoral research Solidarity under Exhaustion examines how solidarity navigates exhaustion, despair, and repression while sustaining infrastructures of care and imagination. Since October 2023, Palestine solidarity organising has shifted from sporadic protests to sustained, confrontational action, forging new coalitions, tactics, and imaginaries. These shifts unfold amid exhaustion: organisers face burnout, publics are overwhelmed, and governments remain complicit through silence or alignment with Israeli policies. Here, solidarity is also endurance: activists sustain themselves emotionally and relationally when efficacy feels uncertain.

I’m a board member at the European Peace Research Association & council member of the International Peace Research Association.

I also hold a degree in robotic engineering from HOGENT University of Applied Sciences and Arts

I'm still alive

• De Smet, Bram J. 2026. ‘Slow Erasure: Identity, Agency and Episteme in Settler-Colonial Genocide by Attrition’. TAPRI Studies in Peace and Conflict Research 113. PhD thesis, Tampere University. https://trepo.tuni.fi/handle/10024/232478?locale=len. https://slowerasure.phd.
• De Smet, Bram J., and Ihntaek Hwang. 2021. Gendered Nationalism, Military Masculinities, and Bodies. Edited by Swati Parashar Tarja Vayrynen Elise Féron,,Catia Cecilia Confortini. Routledge Handbook of Feminist Peace Research. Routledge.
• Bram J De Smet, ed. 2021. Promoting Dialogue on Economic and Fiscal Policy in Tanzania: A Handbook for Practitioners. TAPRI Studies in Peace and Conflict Research 106. Tampere Peace Research Institute.