Xunantunich, Belize
I am an Associate Professor of Peace Studies and Global Politics in the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame. I am also a concurrent Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science.
I am the Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Genocide, a non-profit organization in New York founded in 1982 to promote research and policy analysis on the causes and prevention of genocide and political violence. My research interests include the causes and prevention of genocide and mass atrocities, genocide and mass atrocities early warning, social media disinformation and violence, transitional justice, political reconciliation, trials and truth commissions, and artificial intelligence and violence early warning. Other research interests include contemporary political theory, particularly critical theory and the Frankfurt School. I received my Ph.D. and M.A. in political science (political theory) from the New School for Social Research, New York City. My B.A. is in government and philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin. I am the author of Unchopping a Tree: Reconciliation in the Aftermath of Political Violence, and I've published a number of peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and policy reports. I am also coeditor of Wicked Problems: The Ethics of Action for Peace, Rights, and Justice; Genocide Matters: Ongoing Issues and Emerging Perspectives; Globalization, Social Movements and Peacebuilding; and Responding to Genocide: The Politics of International Action, as well as two shorter books: one on transitional justice and the other on civil society in Cuba. My current work is on comparative genocide, trigger events of mass killings, mass atrocity prediction and prevention, and social media misinformation and political violence. A current collaborative project on using artificial intelligence to detect and analyze visual disinformation campaigns in political violence escalation is here. In addition to directing the non-governmental organization Institute for the Study of Genocide, I served two terms on the board of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, a worldwide association devoted to the study and prevention of genocide, and I currently serve on their policy briefs editorial board. I also served on the United States Institute of Peace's RESOLVE Research Advisory Group. I have also worked as a human rights researcher at the International Center for Transitional Justice and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First). More generally, I regularly consult with the U.S. government, foreign governments, and human rights organizations on genocide and mass atrocity prevention, and on justice and reconciliation efforts. I am the recipient of the 2018 Sheedy Excellence in Teaching Award at Notre Dame. My doctoral dissertation won the Hannah Arendt Award in Politics from the New School for Social Research for best dissertation in political science and was nominated for the American Political Science Association’s Leo Strauss Award in Political Theory. Prior to arriving at Notre Dame, I taught at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where I received the Carol A. Baker '81 Memorial Prize for excellence in research and teaching in the social sciences, and the Caleb T. Winchester Scholar-Teacher Award from Psi Upsilon (Wesleyan chapter). At Notre Dame, I am a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Center for the Study of Social Movements, the ND Initiative for Global Development, the Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights, and the Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning. I also work with Mindfields, a project dedicated to interviewing major scholars of conflict and peace, and the Conflict Consortium, a virtual space to facilitate the collective production of knowledge about political conflict. Black Lives Matter. |
Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame University of Notre Dame |