Welcome Mandela House, Soweto, South Africa, 2024 I am a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Osnabrück at the Chair of Comparative Politics at the Institute of Social Sciences. In July 2025, I finished my PhD in the Department of Political Science at University College London (UCL). In Fall 2024, I was a visiting researcher at the Center for Political Studies (CPS) at the University of Michigan. My research interests lie at the intersection of international relations and contentious politics with a research agenda that evolves around the study of difficult-to-observe conflict processes. I try to better understand both formal and informal relations (coalitions, alliances) between conflict actors through the collection of original primary data during fieldwork and the analysis of this data through multi methods designs, using historical process tracing, network analyses and causal inference methods. My dissertation analyzes organizational alliances in the anti-apartheid opposition in South Africa, examining why some organizations enter formal alliances even if it further exposes them to state repression, while others maintain informal links. I leverage extensive archival data from three archives in South Africa, collected during fieldwork in 2024, and construct a dataset with cooperative and competitive relations for 151 anti-apartheid organizations (political parties, trade unions, religious organizations, student organizations, civic organizations, armed groups). My findings provide evidence for a formalization of alliances during times of repression, especially between nonviolent and violent organizations. Archival insights suggest that organization leaders strategically distinguish between formal and informal relations, formalizing their relations when facing repression, and maintaining informal links with more controversial partners. This work has several implications. First, fragmented and divided multi-actor conflict settings are more interconnected than often anticipated, which policymakers need to take seriously e.g. when devising negotiations. Second, the importance of formal relations suggests an enduring importance of organizations in an age of increasingly leaderless movements. My research has been published in the Journal of Peace Research. Other work in progress looks at the impact of international sanctions on alliances in conflict and the logic of alliance building in resistance movements under repression. In a co-authored project, I have furthermore started collecting novel data on informal alliances in a cross-national setting, measuring defection and co-membership on the African continent.