Research interests
politics of victimhood | feminist analyses of peace processes | critical transitional justice | ethics and methods of researching political violence | critical humanitarianism | the politics of nature and place | narrative and storytelling in the study of politics | care, beauty, and joy in the shadow of war and peace
Current research projects
"We are not good victims": Hierarchies of suffering and the politics of victimhood in Colombia
Book manuscript under development
"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 15 months of 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 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 15 months of 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 Henry J. Leir Institute, and the World Peace Foundation.
Love and care in the study of violence, peace, and justice
Before I ever published a peer-reviewed journal article, I used to write a blog called Stories of Conflict and Love. The blog, which has now mostly migrated to a TinyLetter by the same name, sprang from my years of working as a practitioner in the fields of humanitarianism and peacebuilding. I noticed then that people narrated stories of violence alongside those of care, that love, beauty, and joy existed in their lives side-by-side with the harms they had experienced during war. Though those stories of conflict and love -- emphasis on the "and" -- gripped my attention then, as a researcher of political violence and peacebuilding, I have been less good at documenting them. Love always remained in the margins of my academic work, in ways that did not adequately reflect how my research interlocutors experienced it. This project attempts to address that omission and to reflect critically on the structural incentives that prioritize the study of certain forms of violence over forms of care and love. How might taking love seriously inform our understanding of violence, peace, and justice? What does "taking love seriously" mean in academia and beyond?
This project is in development in 2021 and my thinking is evolving in conversation with Dr Philipp Schulz.
This project is in development in 2021 and my thinking is evolving in conversation with Dr Philipp Schulz.
Soils of war
This project investigates how our understanding of peace and conflict shifts when it is grounded in soil. How do nature, place, and landscape illuminate different experiences of violence, care, harm, and repair? The impetus for this project has stemmed from critically reflecting on my past failings and future orientations. First, I recognized that my work on harm and repair to date has often treated nature as backdrop to the stories of human experience that unfold in the foreground. This framing does not adequately reflect either how my interlocutors in conflict-affected areas have experienced their relations to nature and place or the complex power dynamics that shape those bonds. Scholars of political violence have predominantly examined harms to nature through legal lenses and/or through an emphasis on how these harms affect humans, such as through the experiences of land dispossession and forced displacement. Interdisciplinary scholarship in anthropology, ecology, geography, and indigenous studies, among other fields, complements that frame by seeking to understand relations to nature and place without centering the human.
Second, during my decade of working in environments of political violence as a researcher and humanitarian practitioner, I have increasingly turned my own gaze to moss and wildflowers, to birds and rivers. These sites do not merely represent an escape or a form of solace (though they have provided both at times); rather, they are veritable companions that have shaped how I think about relations of care. This realization may have originated 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. 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?
Second, during my decade of working in environments of political violence as a researcher and humanitarian practitioner, I have increasingly turned my own gaze to moss and wildflowers, to birds and rivers. These sites do not merely represent an escape or a form of solace (though they have provided both at times); rather, they are veritable companions that have shaped how I think about relations of care. This realization may have originated 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. 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?
Militarized victimhood: Subjectivities in tension during transitions from violence
As of July 2020, over 9 million individuals are recognized as victims of the armed conflict in Colombia. This means that roughly one in six Colombians has official victim status. Official recognition by the state as a victim confers potential access to resources, such as reparations, humanitarian assistance, and participation in public policy creation during the transition from armed conflict. Despite the magnitude of the transitional justice program in Colombia, numerous social groups describe themselves as "invisible" or "forgotten" victims.
This project examines the experience of one such group: the claims of victimhood among members of the Colombian state armed forces. Drawing from in-depth fieldwork in Colombia, I ask: What does the status of ‘victim’ mean to people who vie for it or reject it inside state armed forces, and how does it sit alongside other identifications such as 'armed actor', 'state', or 'perpetrator'? How do these claims to victimhood co-exist or collide with civilian narratives, and how do they illuminate different understandings of both martial politics and victimhood itself? The goal of this inquiry is to theoretically and empirically trace how victimhood shapes and complicates subjectivities, claims, and relationships 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 Henry J. Leir Institute, and the World Peace Foundation.
This project examines the experience of one such group: the claims of victimhood among members of the Colombian state armed forces. Drawing from in-depth fieldwork in Colombia, I ask: What does the status of ‘victim’ mean to people who vie for it or reject it inside state armed forces, and how does it sit alongside other identifications such as 'armed actor', 'state', or 'perpetrator'? How do these claims to victimhood co-exist or collide with civilian narratives, and how do they illuminate different understandings of both martial politics and victimhood itself? The goal of this inquiry is to theoretically and empirically trace how victimhood shapes and complicates subjectivities, claims, and relationships 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 Henry J. Leir Institute, and the World Peace Foundation.
Ethical and methodological guidance for reflexive applied research in development
This project is 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.