MrMike Bamigboye

Mike is a lawyer and graduate researcher funded by the Deakin University Postgraduate Research Scholarship (DUPRS). His research examines the role of markets in contemporary conflict, with a particular focus on mercenaries, private military and security companies (PMSCs) and the outsourcing of military logistics. Working at the intersection of international relations, criminology, and law, he adopts a victim-centred, interdisciplinary approach to analyse how international and regional security norms adapt when mercenaries and PMSCs become central to conflict and foreign policy, and how accountability and justice mechanisms can address resulting governance gaps.

He holds an MA in International Relations from FMV Işık University, supported by a graduate scholarship, and has over seven years of experience in teaching and academic leadership roles.

Before commencing his doctoral candidature, Mike trained and practised law for nearly a decade. His professional experience includes work with Ivory Global Consulting Limited in the United Kingdom, training at leading Nigerian law firms with international partnerships (Ajumogobia & Okeke; Banwo & Ighodalo), service as a Legal Officer with the Ogun State Government of Nigeria, and independent legal practice.

Selected recent research (individual and collaborative) includes:

• An invited and acknowledged contribution to a working paper commissioned by the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, Private Military Companies and Child Rights (Kinsey & Has, February 2026), providing input to Section 3, “Regulation: Legal Accountability of PMSCs.”
• Research undertaken for the Oxford University Minerva Global Security Programme on the changing nature of armed conflict, examining the expanding role of private force in contemporary warfare and developing a victim-centred transitional justice framework that integrates prosecutions, truth-seeking, reparations, and vetting to address accountability gaps.
• A study analysing how and why African governments engage Russian private military actors, including the Wagner Group, and assessing the implications for security governance, sovereignty claims, and civilian protection.
• An examination of international, regional, and domestic approaches to regulating private military and security companies (PMSCs), proposing a context-sensitive governance model that combines regional standards, national oversight, and carefully structured self-regulation to enhance rights protection.
• An empirical project integrating distributional measures with institutional analysis to evaluate how rising inequality may undermine democratic consolidation, and to identify policy pathways toward more equitable and resilient governance systems.

Mike regularly contributes to policy-oriented discussions, including as a panelist at King’s College London on African agency and the use of PMSCs (March 2024) and as a resource expert for a European working group on PMSCs (June 2024).

He is also a Junior Fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, Trinity College, University of Toronto.