Peacekeeping operations comprise a massive deployment of human and financial resources into poor, post-conflict areas. The impact on local economies is huge, but poorly understood and rarely studied systematically. While peacekeepers live in the same plac e as local residents, they do not live in the same world. The 'peacekeeping world' comes with a 'peacekeeping economy', the latter referring to the skilled or semi-skilled jobs available to local staff in UN offices or NGOs; informal work (housekeeping, e tc) for international staff; service jobs in the establishments that cater to internationals; and participation in the sex industry. The peacekeeping economy is highly gendered in its division of labor, but otherwise little is known about its impact on lo cal livelihoods, labor markets, and gender relations.The proposed project will critically and empirically examine peacekeeping economies in Liberia, DRC, and Sudan through a gendered political economy lens. In each case, the peacekeeping economies will be mapped, and this will enable research on their impact on local livelihoods. The mapping and livelihood studies will then form the basis for findings related to gender, sustainability, and the interaction between peacekeeping economies and 'official' pe acekeeping and development activities. The project will be qualitative, comparative and feature extensive fieldwork. It will result in a co-edited volume, a PhD thesis, a series of articles in peer-reviewed journals, a large final conference and policy report, and a series of op-eds and think-pieces in popular media and web forums. It aims to generate knowledge that will help policymakers leverage the benefits of peacekeeping economies for poverty alleviation, while mitigating their potentially negative socio-economic and gendered effects. The project will also contribute to the academic and policy literature relating to development aid, poverty, peacekeeping, and gender in conflict and post-conflict environments.