Home

Welcome to my personal webpage. I am a Senior Lecturer|Associate Professor in International Politics at the University of York and the Deputy Director of the York Centre for Conflict and Security (YCCS), Marie Sklodowska Curie (MSCA) Fellow, and the founder and convener of the Politics After War Network (PAW-scholars). Click here to see the PAW-introductory video.

My main areas of research focus on war-to-peace transitions, post-war political development, rebel groups and political parties, and the legacies and politics of mass atrocities, spanning the disciplines of politics, development studies and peace and conflict studies.

I am particularly interested in the politics of (former) liberation movements, (non-state armed groups) and their transition from armed to non-armed politics after insurgency and civil war, the politics of DDR, governance and state-building after armed conflict, and in contentious political settings more generally. This agenda relates to the broader processes of post-colonial and contemporary processes of state-building as well as the interaction dynamics between international interventions and domestic politics. See publications for key outputs on this agenda. I am currently writing a monograph analysing how former rebel groups govern and impact on state-building after civil war.

I am also currently involved in a second research project – the Mass Atrocities Resistance Project – that seeks to identify and understand the strategies threatened groups employ to protect themselves against atrocities, and how these groups may be able to mobilise support domestically or internationally.

My geographical expertise is South and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Timor Leste and the Philippines) with additional cross-regional comparisons with Kosovo and Bosnia. In my research I rely on interview data and fieldwork, document -and text analysis and historical comparative data.

My research has been funded by the European Commission, the Norwegian Research Council, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Philomathia Foundation, alongside several smaller grants and awards.

I regularly take on consultancy as advisor to international organisations working in the fields of democracy support, DDR and peacebuilding and have consulted on several such programmes and projects over the years. See policy tab for recent policy engagements and publications.