About the Speech:
Six years after the fall of Gaddafi, Libya remains mired in chaos, as competing governments vie for power and militias continue to be a widespread problem. The resulting political and security vacuum has allowed people smugglers and other criminal networks to flourish, and the threat posed by Islamic State and other extremists remains. In her address to the IIEA, Mary Fitzgerald will discuss these issues and argue that what happens in Libya matters greatly for for the European Union – and not only in relation to migration. She will examine what went wrong post-Gaddafi and discuss how it might be fixed.
About the Speaker:
Mary Fitzgerald is a journalist and researcher specialising in the Euro-Mediterranean region with a particular focus on Libya. A former Irish Times foreign affairs correspondent, she spent several months in Libya in 2011 reporting on the uprising against Gaddaf, and lived there throughout 2014. Her reporting on Libya has appeared in outlets including the Economist, Foreign Policy, the New Yorker, and the Financial Times. She has conducted research on Libya for the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMED) and the European University Institute (EUI) among others. She is a contributing author to The Libyan Revolution and Its Aftermath, published by Oxford University Press/Hurst. She writes a weekly column on international affairs for the Irish Independent.
