Chris van der Borgh is Associate Professor Conflict Studies and coordinator of the MA Conflict Studies and Human Rights at Utrecht University. He specializes in issues of peace and security, political order, and intervention.

His recent research deals with security politics in El Salvador, a country where he has extensive field experience - both as a practionar and a scholar. His Ph.D. thesis (1999, Utrecht University) deals with the role of external actors in processes of local development and peacebuilding in El Salvador. Recent publications are on street gangs and policies of governments (national and local), grassroots organizations and citizens to deal with this security threat.  

He has also published on the contentious processes of international intervention and post-war reconstruction, with a particular focus on parallel governance and the resistance against international statebuilding in Kosovo. 

Over the past decades Chris van der Borgh was a guest lecturer at several universities, including the University of Copenhagen, the European Peace University of Stadtschlainung and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He also worked for several NGOs as a consultant.