Research interests
care, beauty, and joy in the shadow of war and peace | the politics of victimhood |reflexive pedagogy | the politics of nature and place| critical transitional justice | ethics and methods of researching political violence| narrative and storytelling in the study of politics
Current research projects
A different kind of war story: Centring love and care in peace and conflict studies
Relations and practices of love and care shape how people make sense of and survive experiences of violence. In the midst and wake of violence, people continue to forge intimate relationships, fall in love, and extend different forms of care to one another. Yet, narratives about armed conflict predominantly focus on harms and suffering. This project asks: How can centering love and care change scholarly and policy understandings of conflict and peace?
Love and care are active practices, not passive emotions. Through in-depth, qualitative research, my collaborator Dr Philipp Schulz and I will explore how conflict-affected individuals and communities experience, understand, and practice love and care. We will also investigate how these practices shape how people make sense of violence and remake worlds in its wake. Building on scholarly literature on the ethics of care, the anthropology of love, and emotions in world politics, the project will analyze how love and care illuminate different meanings of politics and the political in the context of armed conflict and peacebuilding. Recognizing that love and care also shape researchers' relationships to their identity and subject matter, we will further examine how these practices underpin and sustain the work of scholars of violence.
We hope to broaden the understanding of harm beyond war to include other forms of violence and loss, from land dispossession to climate-related losses and from the COVID-19 pandemic to other events of mass grief and disablement. We do not deny the importance of ongoing studies of harm and injustice; rather, we make the case for the significance of considering practices of love and care alongside violence. Theoretically and analytically, a focus on love and care can shift our sense of what peace looks and feels like, where it takes place, who is involved in the making of it, when violence ends and peace begins, and how violence lives on and transforms people's lives. This contribution reflects a feminist approach to violence and peace research, which calls for investigating these subjects in ways that go beyond the formal, official actors and actions associated with political violence and peacebuilding. Ethically and methodologically, this project responds to emerging calls for scholars of violence to move beyond damage-centered research in favor of also meaningfully engaging with the forces and relations that sustain life.
This project has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the German Research Foundation (DFG). My co-Principal Investigator on this project is Dr Philipp Schulz. You can listen to a brief podcast conversation about this ongoing work here, with many thanks to Visualising War for hosting!
Love and care are active practices, not passive emotions. Through in-depth, qualitative research, my collaborator Dr Philipp Schulz and I will explore how conflict-affected individuals and communities experience, understand, and practice love and care. We will also investigate how these practices shape how people make sense of violence and remake worlds in its wake. Building on scholarly literature on the ethics of care, the anthropology of love, and emotions in world politics, the project will analyze how love and care illuminate different meanings of politics and the political in the context of armed conflict and peacebuilding. Recognizing that love and care also shape researchers' relationships to their identity and subject matter, we will further examine how these practices underpin and sustain the work of scholars of violence.
We hope to broaden the understanding of harm beyond war to include other forms of violence and loss, from land dispossession to climate-related losses and from the COVID-19 pandemic to other events of mass grief and disablement. We do not deny the importance of ongoing studies of harm and injustice; rather, we make the case for the significance of considering practices of love and care alongside violence. Theoretically and analytically, a focus on love and care can shift our sense of what peace looks and feels like, where it takes place, who is involved in the making of it, when violence ends and peace begins, and how violence lives on and transforms people's lives. This contribution reflects a feminist approach to violence and peace research, which calls for investigating these subjects in ways that go beyond the formal, official actors and actions associated with political violence and peacebuilding. Ethically and methodologically, this project responds to emerging calls for scholars of violence to move beyond damage-centered research in favor of also meaningfully engaging with the forces and relations that sustain life.
This project has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the German Research Foundation (DFG). My co-Principal Investigator on this project is Dr Philipp Schulz. You can listen to a brief podcast conversation about this ongoing work here, with many thanks to Visualising War for hosting!
Growing roots: Creating a sense of place
This project sheds light on how Scottish professionals (and professionals working in Scotland) reflect on place in and through their work. I engage with musicians, singer-songwriters, museum curators, librarians, writers, and others to discuss: How is creative work, and one's own sense of self and relationships, rooted in place? What role does Scotland – as a place – play in creative work, and in what ways does it show up in what and how people create? How do people practice care towards place and how do they enact stewardship and care? What links emerge between land(scape), place, and community? The first round of events in the summer of 2023, supported by the Scotland's Future Series, is carried out in partnership with the Glasgow Women's Library and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Moss and wildflowers, birds and rivers do not merely represent an "escape" or a form of solace (though they have provided both at times), nor are they exclusively the sites that remind us of climate destruction; rather, they are veritable companions that shape how we can think about relations of care, grief, and survival alike. This realization may have originated for me during my humanitarian work in conflict-affected environments, but it also applies to settings in which political violence is not as readily observable–sites at which other forms of oppression, marginalization, exclusion, and harm persist. This project seeks to center the moss, wildflowers, birds, and rivers and, thus, to reorient where we look for conflict and peace. I turn my attention to sites that political violence scholarship has often neglected: botanic gardens, wildflower meadows that grow in the wake of bombings, online communities that gather to share knowledge on plants. These seemingly disparate sites tell stories about nationalism and colonialism, about community and activism, about beauty, survival, and even thriving. How does beauty hide violence and co-exist alongside it? How are sites of beauty also sites of violence, and how are sites of violence also sites of care? And what notions of politics come to the fore when we take these stories seriously?
Work on this project has been possible thanks to generous funding from the Scotland's Future programme at the University of St Andrews. As part of the programme, I am curating a series of events in which creative practitioners based in Scotland reflect on how place has shaped their work, sense of self, and relationships.
Moss and wildflowers, birds and rivers do not merely represent an "escape" or a form of solace (though they have provided both at times), nor are they exclusively the sites that remind us of climate destruction; rather, they are veritable companions that shape how we can think about relations of care, grief, and survival alike. This realization may have originated for me during my humanitarian work in conflict-affected environments, but it also applies to settings in which political violence is not as readily observable–sites at which other forms of oppression, marginalization, exclusion, and harm persist. This project seeks to center the moss, wildflowers, birds, and rivers and, thus, to reorient where we look for conflict and peace. I turn my attention to sites that political violence scholarship has often neglected: botanic gardens, wildflower meadows that grow in the wake of bombings, online communities that gather to share knowledge on plants. These seemingly disparate sites tell stories about nationalism and colonialism, about community and activism, about beauty, survival, and even thriving. How does beauty hide violence and co-exist alongside it? How are sites of beauty also sites of violence, and how are sites of violence also sites of care? And what notions of politics come to the fore when we take these stories seriously?
Work on this project has been possible thanks to generous funding from the Scotland's Future programme at the University of St Andrews. As part of the programme, I am curating a series of events in which creative practitioners based in Scotland reflect on how place has shaped their work, sense of self, and relationships.
"Good Victims": The Political As A Feminist Question
The book associated with this project, Good Victims, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2024.
"This is the era of the victims,” declared the High Commissioner for Peace in Colombia in his June 2014 address to the Colombian Senate. Yet, not all victims are created equal. Victimhood does not merely describe an experience of harm; it is also a political status and a site of power that shapes claim-making, relationships, and experiences of justice during transitions from violence. During my decade of work as a humanitarian practitioner in Colombia and elsewhere, I observed a tension between two narratives about victimhood. On the one hand, "the victims" are often imagined as a monolith, an undifferentiated collective. On the other hand, those who identify as victims (or vie for recognition as such) refer to themselves and others as good victims, invisible victims, forgotten victims, privileged victims, or (un)desirable victims. In this second narrative, victimhood is always modified by an adjective.
In this research project I ask: What does it mean to be a “good victim”? How is victimhood produced and performed—by representatives of the state and those who identify as victims alike —in order to be legible in the context of transitional justice processes? And what are the implications of these constructed hierarchies for theories and experiences of justice during transitions from violence? Drawing from in-depth fieldwork in Colombia, I focus specifically on the bureaucratic production of hierarchies through state mechanisms of transitional justice. I also explore the ways in which those who identify as victims challenge, subvert, or reinforce these dynamics.
This interdisciplinary project is grounded in anthropological literature on suffering, complemented by insights from the fields of transitional justice, feminist theory, and critical humanitarianism. I theorize the political, material, and emotional stakes of victimhood and illustrate how hierarchies shape interactions with the state and experiences of justice during transitions from violence.
Research for this project has been possible thanks to generous funding support in the form of grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the United States Institute of Peace, the Folke Bernadotte Academy, the Henry J. Leir Institute, and the World Peace Foundation.
"This is the era of the victims,” declared the High Commissioner for Peace in Colombia in his June 2014 address to the Colombian Senate. Yet, not all victims are created equal. Victimhood does not merely describe an experience of harm; it is also a political status and a site of power that shapes claim-making, relationships, and experiences of justice during transitions from violence. During my decade of work as a humanitarian practitioner in Colombia and elsewhere, I observed a tension between two narratives about victimhood. On the one hand, "the victims" are often imagined as a monolith, an undifferentiated collective. On the other hand, those who identify as victims (or vie for recognition as such) refer to themselves and others as good victims, invisible victims, forgotten victims, privileged victims, or (un)desirable victims. In this second narrative, victimhood is always modified by an adjective.
In this research project I ask: What does it mean to be a “good victim”? How is victimhood produced and performed—by representatives of the state and those who identify as victims alike —in order to be legible in the context of transitional justice processes? And what are the implications of these constructed hierarchies for theories and experiences of justice during transitions from violence? Drawing from in-depth fieldwork in Colombia, I focus specifically on the bureaucratic production of hierarchies through state mechanisms of transitional justice. I also explore the ways in which those who identify as victims challenge, subvert, or reinforce these dynamics.
This interdisciplinary project is grounded in anthropological literature on suffering, complemented by insights from the fields of transitional justice, feminist theory, and critical humanitarianism. I theorize the political, material, and emotional stakes of victimhood and illustrate how hierarchies shape interactions with the state and experiences of justice during transitions from violence.
Research for this project has been possible thanks to generous funding support in the form of grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the United States Institute of Peace, the Folke Bernadotte Academy, the Henry J. Leir Institute, and the World Peace Foundation.
Ethical and methodological guidance for reflexive applied research in development
This project was carried out in collaboration with Elizabeth Hoffecker, Kendra Leith, and Kimberley Wilson, and in partnership with MIT D-Lab and Tufts University.
Read more here.
Interdisciplinary scholarly literature considers the potentially adverse effects of the research process on its participants. Our approach addresses the processes and practices of operational research, conducted either by practitioner organizations independently or in partnership with academic institutions. Operational research, which encompasses monitoring and evaluation, needs assessments, and other activities that are sometimes not readily labeled 'research', represents an intervention in the lives of participants. The ethical and methodological dilemmas of this intervention have received less attention than purely academic discussions of human subject research. How can operational researchers meaningfully reckon with the effects of the research process on both those conducting it and those participating in it throughout the research cycle? This approach, co-developed over several years through engagement with operational researchers across sectors, treats the experience of the research process as a site of power that ought to be considered as seriously as the substance and findings of the research intervention. The approach consists of four principles to promote more rigorous, relevant, right-sized, and respectful research, a framework of questions that operational researchers and their organizations can consider when carrying out this kind of work, and illustrations of the application of these tools in a range of contexts.
Read more here.
Interdisciplinary scholarly literature considers the potentially adverse effects of the research process on its participants. Our approach addresses the processes and practices of operational research, conducted either by practitioner organizations independently or in partnership with academic institutions. Operational research, which encompasses monitoring and evaluation, needs assessments, and other activities that are sometimes not readily labeled 'research', represents an intervention in the lives of participants. The ethical and methodological dilemmas of this intervention have received less attention than purely academic discussions of human subject research. How can operational researchers meaningfully reckon with the effects of the research process on both those conducting it and those participating in it throughout the research cycle? This approach, co-developed over several years through engagement with operational researchers across sectors, treats the experience of the research process as a site of power that ought to be considered as seriously as the substance and findings of the research intervention. The approach consists of four principles to promote more rigorous, relevant, right-sized, and respectful research, a framework of questions that operational researchers and their organizations can consider when carrying out this kind of work, and illustrations of the application of these tools in a range of contexts.