​​I am Associate Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College as well as a faculty committee member of Peace and Conflict Studies. 

My research focuses on civilian agency and civilian protection in armed conflict, humanitarianism, peacekeeping, and the role of international institutions. I have conducted fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Kenya, and Iraq. I am the author of Taking Sides in Peacekeeping: Impartiality and the Future of the United Nations (Oxford University Press, 2016), several academic journal articles, and co-editor of Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings: A Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2023). I am currently working on a book project about the moral agency of frontline protectors. For more information, please visit the research tab.

Before coming to Swarthmore, I taught at the University of Oxford where I was the Rose Research Fellow in International Relations (Lady Margaret Hall) and Associate Faculty at the Blavatnik School of Government. I have been a visiting fellow at Columbia University and the International Peace Institute (IPI), an Action Canada public policy fellow, and a Sauve scholar at McGill University. From 2016-2019, I was a research collaborator on the European Research Council (€ 2.4 million) project: “Individualisation of War: Reconfiguring the Morality, Law, and Politics of Armed Conflict” at the European University Institute.

My research has been supported by the European Research Council, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, Government of Canada, British Council, and the Australian Government’s Civil-Military Center.  Outside of academia, I have worked as a consultant for the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Refugee Studies Center (University of Oxford), the Danish Refugee Council, and Oxford Analytica. I am an elected fellow of the Rift Valley Institute, an independent, non-profit organization working in eastern and central Africa to bring local knowledge to bear on social, political, and economic development. I am also co-founder of the Oxford Central Africa Forum (OCAF).

I earned my MPhil and DPhil (Phd) from the University of Oxford (St Antony’s College), and my A.B. from Brown University.

I am a proud Canadian, lover of wild spaces, and mom of three.