Ayabavi Linda Ophélie Comlan Sessi

Ayabavi Linda Ophélie Comlan Sessi is an independent researcher who earned her PhD in Governance and Regional Integration in 2024. Her work focuses on governance, peace and security, gender, conflict and violence, as well as human rights, with a particular interest in the dynamics of violent extremism and terrorism in West Africa. In 2025, she was awarded a place in the Scientific Writing Mentorship Programme for early-career political science researchers in West Africa, organized by the University of Nottingham and funded by the British Academy. She has contributed to several research projects on the prevention of violent extremism.

The project

Title: Socialisation des jeunes à la violence extrémiste dans le Nord du Bénin : une perspective sociologique.

"Since the abduction of two French tourists in May 2019 in Pendjari National Park, as well as the attacks carried out in November 2021 in Mékrou Gnin-Gnin, in the Alibori department, northern Benin has been facing a gradual intensification of extremist violence. This dynamic is part of a regional context marked by persistent security instability in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Nigeria.
This evolution is reflected in a resurgence of violent extremist activities, revealing a worrying trend closely linked to multiple structural vulnerabilities, particularly in socio-economic, security, and institutional terms. In this context, young people appear as a particularly vulnerable group, exposed to a range of structural factors likely to encourage their adherence to violent logics or their instrumentalization by extremist actors.

Thus, socialization into violence occurs both within armed groups and in everyday life, through social, cultural, and political dynamics that contribute to the normalization of certain violent repertoires of action. Violence can therefore be understood as a socially constructed process—learned and internalized—resulting from the interplay between individual determinants and structural constraints.
From this perspective, the present project aims at analyzing the processes of socialization into violence among young people, identifying the underlying explanatory factors, and examining the structural conditions that shape young people’s appropriation or rejection of violence."

Hosting institution: Unité de Recherches Migrations et Société (Urmis), laboratoire de l’Université Côte d’Azur, de l’Université Paris Cité, de l’IRD et du CNRS.

Selective Bibliography

• Comlan Sessi Ayabavi Linda Ophélie, ‘‘Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland and Violent Extremism in Burkina Faso’’, African Solutions (AfSOL) Journal, 6 | 1, p. 20, 2025
• Comlan Sessi Ayabavi Linda Ophélie, « La figure de la femme dans la lutte contre l’extrémisme violent dans le Liptako-Gourma », in Guerre et terrorisme au sahel et au Moyen-Orient : Radioscopie d’une catastrophe permanente, Monange, p. 137-159, 2024
• Comlan Sessi Ayabavi Linda Ophélie & Messia Ngong Lionel, « Femmes : Victimes de l’extrémisme violent au Mali et au Nigéria », Revue Africaine sur le Terrorisme, 11 | 3, p. 175-190, 2021