Founded in 2017, the Instituto CAPAZ (Instituto Colombo – Alemán para la paz) aims at monitoring and supporting the Colombian peace process. Its constitution of both Colombian and German participating research institutions combined with the German funding and initiative deserve further examination. This thesis thus seeks to first present the institute and second to embed it in its political and theoretical circumstances. Building on interviews with relevant stakeholders, I provide the first conceptualisation of this research institute. Based on the results of the empirical investigation on the Instituto CAPAZ, I identify four theoretical concepts that contextualise the institute. This conceptualisation shows that the Instituto CAPAZ is in first line an involvement of Germany in Colombia, secondly, how the CAPAZ fits into German foreign politics, and thirdly analyses the patterns of academic cooperation between partners in the Instituto CAPAZ. The fourth theoretical concept builds on these findings and concentrates on the intersections between the political and academic sphere within the institute. Overall, I come to the conclusion to characterise the Instituto CAPAZ as an academic actor with a political purpose.
