Dr Joana de Deus Pereira

Dr Joana de Deus Pereira is Senior Research Fellow at RUSI Europe in Brussels, specialising in counterterrorism, preventing and countering violent extremism, and hybrid threats. She has over two decades of experience across research, academic and governmental institutions, working in several European languages, and her work sits at the intersection of policy and research. She works closely with EU institutions, including DG HOME, DG ENEST and the EEAS, and has delivered technical assistance for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Ukraine, Mozambique and Iraq in the realms of prevention of extremism and radicalisation. Her earlier career included geopolitical and country risk analysis in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Lusophone and Francophone Africa.

Since September 2024, she has been the United Nations Western States Mandate Holder on the Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, under the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and will become Chair between November 2026-October 2027. She is also a Key Expert at the UNICRI Expert Group on Private Military Companies.

Her current research focuses on the threats that test Europe's resilience below the threshold of open conflict, including foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), the exploitation of political, societal and economic vulnerabilities by hostile state and non-state actors, and the funding of radicalisation and extremism in Europe. Her thematic focus spans private military and security companies, European counterterrorism and radicalisation policy, undesirable foreign funding and influence (UFF/UFI), border security and border management, and migration and refugee management. She is research lead for the EU Knowledge Hub Thematic Panel 7, Global and Geopolitical Factors and Undesirable Foreign Influences (DG HOME), where she leads the UFF portfolio.

She has been a lecturer and instructor at the NATO Centre of Excellence Defence Against Terrorism (COE-DAT) since November 2018, teaching border security, border technology and counterterrorism, and Adjunct Professor at Sciences Po Paris School of International Affairs since September 2021, teaching border studies and private military and security companies within the Master in Global Security. From September 2021 to July 2025, she was Team Leader for the EU Thematic Trainings on Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism, and from 2021 to 2024 she was Team Coordinator for the Functional Unit -Research within the Radicalisation Awareness Network Policy Support (RAN PS and RAN Western Balkans).

She is a Member of the Scientific Board of the NOVA School of Law War & Law LAB, co-manager of the Jean Monnet Network on EU Counter-Terrorism (EUCTER), a researcher of the European Network on Terrorism Issues (EENeT), a TAIEX Expert for the European Commission, and an Advisory Board Member of INOV, Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores Inovação, in Portugal.

Dr de Deus Pereira holds a PhD in War Studies from King's College London, where her thesis examined the privatisation of security in the oil sectors of Angola and Nigeria. She was subsequently awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA, Horizon 2020) postdoctoral fellowship, researching the externalisation of migration policy and the role of the security industry in managing migration and refugee flows.