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United States Institute of Peace

Current Peace Scholars

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This year’s Peace Scholar cohort is composed of 19 Peace Scholars who are conducting their dissertation research across the globe. To learn more, read their biographies below.

2024 USIP Peace Scholars

Current Peace Scholars

Nangyalai Attal

Nangyalai Attal

Dissertation Summary

Nangyalai Attal’s research addresses how a reductionist concept of Jihad was promoted among Afghan children in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Cold War. Scholars of Islam and historians of the history of Islam have multiple interpretations of Jihad, often inclining toward peace and sometimes toward war. The first-ever use of Jihad in schools or madrassas as foundational learning occurred in the 1980s in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan focused on violent Jihad. This form of Jihad continues to permeate all other forms of Jihad in shaping the Afghan society and beyond to this day.

Biography 

Attal is an adjunct instructor of international education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research focuses on curriculum and peace education and the intersecting role of education in crisis and conflict contexts. Attal’s research has been published by the Journal of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education and the Comparative Education Review. Attal holds an master's degree in human resources management from Golden Gate University, where he was a Fulbright scholar, and a bachelor's degree in in English language and literature from Kabul Education University.

Minerva Peace and Security Scholar

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • University of Massachusetts Amherst
  • "Jihad Literacy: The Legacy of US-sponsored Textbooks for Children in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
María Ballesteros

María Ballesteros

Dissertation Summary

Why do some states flourish and democratize after civil war while others fail? María Ballesteros explores the role of wartime political orders in post-war political and economic development. More broadly she studies how combatants become states, and how informal war-time institutions set countries on differing paths to stability and development. Ballesteros' case study is on understanding the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan after their victory in 2021. She argues that the new government’s state-building choices are mediated by the wartime loyalties of the local population and the economic characteristics of each territory. The project employs novel datasets, such as call detail records produced by a major Afghan telecommunications company.

Biography 

Ballesteros’ research focuses on the political economy of post-war state reconstruction, wartime governance and organized violence. She holds a master's degree in government from Harvard University, and a bachelor's degree in political science from ITAM University in Mexico City.

Minerva/USIP Peace Scholar Fellow

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • Harvard University
  • “How Rebels Become States: Essays on Post Civil War State-Building and Development.”
Nicholas Blanchette

Nicholas Blanchette

Dissertation Summary

How do states reveal information about advanced military technologies in the context of peacetime security competition? This dissertation explores how states weigh the tradeoffs of capability revelation. While cloaking novel technologies in secrecy preserves their military utility, doing so foregoes peacetime advantages of revealed military power. Using an original typology of four capability revelation strategies and theoretical framework to explain strategy selection, this project illuminates why states variously hide, exaggerate or disclose advanced military technologies to their strategic rivals. Nicholas Blanchette tests this theoretical framework through the use of archival research, elite interviews and in-depth historical case studies.

Biography 

Blanchette is a predoctoral research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research explores the role of nuclear weapons, technological competition and coercion in international politics. Blanchette was previously a Hans J. Morgenthau fellow at the University of Notre Dame's International Security Center and has worked as an adjunct researcher at the RAND Corporation during his academic studies. His research has been published in Foreign Policy and Cambridge University Press. He holds a Master of Philosophy in international relations with distinction from the University of Oxford and a bachelor's degree in political science from Colorado College.

USIP Peace Scholar Fellow

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “Strategies of Capability Revelation: How States Reveal Information about Advanced Nuclear and Conventional Military Technologies.”
Lisa de Sousa Dias

Lisa de Sousa Dias

Dissertation Summary

The return of displaced populations is widely seen as crucial for postwar peacebuilding. Yet how return is experienced and perceived by those most affected is not well understood. Juxtaposing the experiences of refugees and internally displaced people (IDP), Lisa de Sousa Dias' dissertation asks: How do these populations variously experience wartime displacement and return? What is the impact of these experiences on postwar notions of political belonging and home? Drawing on 12 months of research in Mozambique, de Sousa Dias finds meaningful differences in the experiences of refugees and IDPs during displacement and return, with divergent impacts for postwar political belonging. Altogether, this project challenges conventional understandings of return, showing how it is neither a universal experience nor a panacea.

Biography 

De Sousa Dias examines how people live through and survive violent conflict and displacement with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Her dissertation focuses on the experiences of returning refugees and internally displaced people in postwar Mozambique. While voluntary repatriation is commonly understood as the preferred solution to displacement crises, centering returnees’ lived experiences raises critical questions about the realities, meanings and possibilities of return. Her research has been published in American Behavioral Scientist. De Sousa Dias holds a master's degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a bachelor's degree in international relations from Mount Holyoke College.

Minerva Peace and Security Scholar

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • “Escaping Violence, Returning Home: Disparate Political Belonging Among Refugees and Internally Displaced Populations in Post-Conflict Mozambique.”
Eleanor Freund

Eleanor Freund

Dissertation Summary

Eleanor Freund explores the variation in China's security relationships with other states. She examines why Beijing adopts formal alliance commitments with some states but opts for ad-hoc security arrangements with others. Current international relations research focuses on the initiation of security relationships between states but overlooks the reasons that determine the type of security cooperation adopted. Freund argues that states carefully structure their security relationships in response to the level of external threat they perceive. She tests this argument against China's security relationships with other states from 1949 to the present.

Biography

Freund is a pre-doctoral fellow in the international security program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Her research focuses on Chinese statecraft and security policy, with an emphasis on evaluating and explaining China’s security relationships with other states. Freund holds a master's degree in global affairs from Tsinghua University in Beijing, where she was a Schwarzman scholar, and a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research has been published in Global Studies Quarterly.

USIP Peace Scholar Fellow

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “Strategies of Security Cooperation: External Balancing in Chinese Foreign Policy, 1949-Present."
Julian Gerez

Julian Gerez

Dissertation Summary

Why does the state use law enforcement to crack down in some places but not others? Focusing on counternarcotics policies, Julian Gerez's dissertation conceptualizes the implementation of law enforcement as a form of non-material redistribution shaped by electoral politics. Incumbent politicians use anti-drug efforts strategically to reap the benefits of such policies while eschewing their costs. Using evidence from Colombia, Gerez demonstrates patterns of uneven enforcement and studies the consequences of these patterns on democratic institutions, programmatic linkages between citizens and politicians, and the rule of law.

Biography 

Gerez’s research focuses on the political economy of criminal justice and its enforcement in Latin America. His research has been published in World Politics and State Politics and Policy Quarterly. Gerez holds a master's degree in political science from Columbia University and a bachelor's degree in political science from Northwestern University.

Minerva Peace and Security Scholar

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • Columbia University
  • “The Political Economy of Supply-Side Counternarcotics.”
Elizabeth Good

Elizabeth Good

Dissertation Summary

Elizabeth Good’s dissertation explores three sets of questions to unpack women’s representation in negotiation. What is the relationship between women’s involvement in peace negotiations and the likelihood that agreements contain explicit provisions for women? What explains negotiation outcomes for women? How does political context change the relationship between women’s descriptive and substantive representation? Good’s research combines quantitative and qualitative methods, including statistical modeling, text-as-data analysis, experiments and process tracing. Her findings uncover power dynamics governing peace negotiations, offering insight into peacebuilding, international security and diplomacy.

Biography 

Good is a research fellow at the women and public policy program at Harvard Kennedy School. She had previous fellowships at the international security program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, the program on negotiation at Harvard Law School, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Good studies the influence of gendered power dynamics on women’s involvement in peace negotiations, asking how women advocate for women in peace and security spaces. Good has worked as a gender specialist for UNDP in Kosovo and USAID in Ghana. She holds a master's degree in political science and a bachelor's degree in international relations and geography from the University of British Columbia.

Minerva Peace and Security Scholar

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • Northwestern University
  • "Willing and Able: Power Dynamics and Women’s Representation in Peace Processes.”
Isabel Güiza-Gómez

Isabel Güiza-Gómez

Dissertation Summary

Isabel Güiza-Gómez investigates how and why land redistribution is forged in civil war peace processes. She argues that land reform is committed when opposition actors, like Indigenous, Afro-descendant and peasant movements, threaten stability or build consensus. Land delivery hinges on the systematic influence of newly incorporated opposition actors on policymaking. She develops her thesis via comparative historical analysis of two Colombian peacemaking periods (e.g., 1982-2002 and 2012-2022), using process tracing, natural language processing, and panel-data methods with archives, interviews and datasets on movement petitions and land allocation. External validity is tested via cross-national analysis of settlement content and a shadow-case comparison of El Salvador and Guatemala.

Biography 

Güiza-Gómez has worked on peacebuilding, transitional justice and land policies in Colombia. Her research delves into the conditions under which marginalized actors can forge development and democracy in Latin America amidst violence and inequality. She examines strategies employed by diverse collective actors, including Indigenous, Afro-descendant and peasant activists, in driving land redistribution during civil war peace processes. Güiza-Gómez also investigates grassroots actors’ involvement in building electoral vehicles for the left and citizen attitudes toward post-war lethal violence. She holds a master's degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame, a master's degree in law from Universidad Nacional de Colombia and a bachelor's degree in law from Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia.

USIP Peace Scholar Fellow

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • University of Notre Dame
  • “Landing Peace: Rural-Poor Mobilization and Land Redistribution in Civil War Political Transitions.”
Eyal Hanfling

Eyal Hanfling

Dissertation Summary

How does social media depicting contentious politics affect intergroup cooperation? Eyal Hanfling's dissertation explores the consequences of this digitized contention for WhatsApp users living in India. He argues that online “lurkers” internalize narratives depicted online and use them to make decisions about cooperation. Hanfling’s project explores emotional, informational, and social norm mechanisms that impact Hindu-Muslim relations. To develop and test the theory, Hanfling employs a mixed methods approach, using quantitative analyses of social media content, relational interviews, and survey and lab-in-the-field experiments. The project's findings may inform decision-making on social media oversight, counter-narratives and conflict prevention.

Biography 

Hanfling’s research interests include contentious politics, ethnicity and political communication with a focus on South Asia. His research has been supported by Schmidt Futures’ International Strategy Forum and MIT’s Center for International Studies. At MIT, he is affiliated with the security studies program, Global Diversity Lab and GOV/LAB. Hanfling served as a research assistant in the South Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC. Hanfling holds a bachelor's degree in public policy studies and South Asian languages and civilizations from the University of Chicago.

USIP Peace Scholar Fellow

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “Lurking but Learning: The Effects of WhatsApp on Intergroup Cooperation in India.”
Suha Hassen

Suha Hassen

Dissertation Summary

Suha Hassen investigates the decision-making processes behind individuals joining the ISIS organization and their pathways toward violent jihadist extremism. Her project entails in-depth interviews with 80 former ISIS fighters in Iraqi prisons, encompassing Arab, local and international members. Hassen investigates radicalization, recruitment and networking at both organizational and individual levels. Her research seeks to uncover root causes and factors leading to violent radicalization, aiming to delineate the pathways and mechanisms involved. 

Biography 

Hassen specializes in qualitative and quantitative field research on conflict and peacebuilding. She previously served as a research analyst for the nonviolent action program at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Hassen also served as logistics coordinator for USAID in Iraq. Hassen holds a master's degree in women, gender and sexuality studies from Oregon State University and a Ph.D. from Al-Nahrain University in Iraq.

Minerva Peace and Security Scholar

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • George Mason University
  • “Investigating How and Why People Join the ISIS Terrorist Organization: A Comparative Study of Iraqi, Arab, and International Ex-fighters Inside the Iraqi Prisons.”
Whitney Hough

Whitney Hough

Dissertation Summary

Whitney Hough examines the role of teachers in conflict and peacebuilding across six secondary schools in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon. Through qualitative and participatory action research methods, she analyzes how teachers envision their responsibilities as transformative agents in insecure contexts, the opportunity and risk factors they associate with those responsibilities, and how they use agency to adopt, adapt and/or resist peacebuilding efforts. Hough centers teachers as essential actors in shaping protracted conflict. By amplifying teachers’ perspectives, the research adds key actors’ experiences to scholarship on conflict-related initiatives in schools, such as peace education, socio-emotional learning curricula and contentious history education.

Biography 

Hough’s research focuses on the nexus of education, conflict, development and peacebuilding. She is particularly interested in exploring teacher agency in conflict-affected contexts; access to high-quality secondary education in emergencies; and education’s role in protracted conflict. Hough holds a master's degree in conflict, security and development from the University of Bradford UK, and a bachelor's degree in psychology and cross-cultural studies from Carleton College.

Minerva Peace and Security Scholar

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • Teachers College, Columbia University
  • “Teachers as Transformative Agents During Protracted Conflict: A Case Study of Cameroon.”
Katherine Irajpanah

Katherine Irajpanah

Dissertation Summary

What explains the divergence in the duration of asymmetric and symmetric wars? Katherine Irajpanah presents a theory of asymmetric power and war outcomes, in which she argues that the international normative and legal environment constrains the influence of military power. Irajpanah shows decolonial norms, including self-determination and sovereign equality, generated a specific set of ideas about how war participants should fight. Next, she examines mechanisms of diffusion through the statistical analysis of military strategies. Finally, she shows these shifting strategies shape macro-level patterns in war duration.

Biography 

Irajpanah’s research on war formalities and international signaling is featured in Security Studies and Presidential Studies Quarterly. Previously, she was a Hans J. Morgenthau grand strategy fellow at University of Notre Dame’s International Security Center and an adjunct policy analyst at the RAND Corporation. Irajpanah holds a bachelor's degree in international relations from Stanford University.

Minerva Peace and Security Scholar

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • Harvard University
  • “Small Arms and Influence: How Decolonial Norms Disrupted Military Superiority.”
Mirella Pretell Gomero

Mirella Pretell Gomero

Dissertation Summary

Mirella Pretell Gomero examines Indigenous struggles against large-scale environmental injustices in the Amazonian region of Loreto, focusing on the effects of oil extraction on Indigenous women’s lives, working in partnership with the Kukama Indigenous women’s organization, Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana. Her research foregrounds Indigenous women’s epistemologies to offer a unique way of knowledge production by centering on Indigenous women’s everyday life experiences while regarding gendered knowledge as key to addressing environmental concerns.

Biography 

Pretell Gomero has over a decade of experience in environmental-related issues and on the ground expertise in the Andes Amazon. She is deeply committed to environmental justice and has a longstanding engagement with Indigenous peoples. Pretell Gomero was previously head of the Amazon's Loreto office of Peru's Environmental Protection Agency. She worked for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in the implementation of the Joint Declaration of Intent between Peru, Norway and Germany to reduce deforestation in the Amazon, among other Amazon-related initiatives. Pretell Gomero holds a master's degree in environment and sustainable development from University College London and a bachelor's degree in political science from Stockholm University.

USIP Peace Scholar Fellow

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • Syracuse University
  • “Beyond the Oil Pipeline: Environmental Injustices and Indigenous Women’s Struggles in the Northern Peruvian Amazon.”
Julia Raven

Julia Raven

Dissertation Summary

Julia Raven’s dissertation examines the effect of strategic variation in ethnic exclusion in colonial militaries on contemporary military design. She is building an original, cross-national dataset of colonial military structures through archival research to understand when colonizers made their colonies’ militaries ethnically stacked versus inclusive. Raven argues that historic conflict shaped the ethnic composition of colonial militaries. She tests the durability of colonizer-designed militaries to determine more conclusively the impact the colonial era had on the military designs of post-independence states. 

Biography 

Raven examines the challenges to meaningful military reform and argues that colonizers strategically varied the ethnic composition of their colonial militaries and supported veto actors to cement those designs after independence. Her research has been supported by the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), Georges Lurcy Charitable and Educational Trust, Institute of International Studies (UC Berkeley), and Center for American Democracy (UC Berkeley). Raven holds a master's degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor's degree in political science and communication studies from University of California, Los Angeles.

Minerva Peace and Security Scholar

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • University of California at Berkeley
  • “The Origins of Ethnic Stacking: The Design and Durability of Colonial Militaries.”
Nikoleta Sremac

Nikoleta Sremac

Dissertation Summary

Nikoleta Sremac examines the relationship between gender and collective memory of the 1990s Yugoslav wars in Serbia. Applying a feminist lens to the issue of denial of mass atrocities, Sremac explores Serbian women’s challenges to male-driven narratives of the wars and their role in constructing competing narratives. What barriers exist to women’s full participation in shaping public discourse about the past? How might dominant narratives differ if women had greater influence? Employing a mixed qualitative methodological approach, she demonstrates how gender inequality affects participation in national memory processes. 

Biography

Sremac’s research explores the intersections of gender, social movements and politics of memory in post-war societies. Sremac's work has appeared in the American National Biography, Women’s Policy Journal of Harvard University, Society Pages and Inkstick Media. Her research has also been supported by the University of Minnesota Badzin Fellowship in holocaust and genocide studies and the Hella Mears Fellowship in German and European studies. Sremac holds a master's degree in sociology from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor's degree in political science and international relations from Clark University.

Minerva Peace and Security Scholar

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
  • “History in Whose Hands? Gendering Collective Memory of the Yugoslav Wars in Serbia."
Nicolas Torres-Echeverry

Nicolas Torres-Echeverry

Dissertation Summary

How does a stigmatized political project reconstitute itself during peace and war efforts? And upon which organizational bases? Nicolas Torres-Echeverry’s dissertation examines the past decades in Colombia, a period marked by sustained armed conflict interspersed with peace initiatives. As some left-wing rebel groups demobilized and others continued in war, the country’s left underwent significant reconfiguration. Focusing on the urban context and drawing on two years of ethnographic work and 170 interviews across five Colombian cities, his findings identify the processes shaping the political development of the Colombian left. Torres-Echeverry’s research explores how different organizations—from soccer fans to universities—interacting in their local contexts contributed to reconfiguring political imagination.

Biography

Torres-Echeverry’s research spans political sociology, war and peace, political organization, internet and society, and urban sociology, with a focus on Latin America. He has worked as a researcher at the Center for the Study of Law, Justice, and Society (Dejusticia), focusing on state-building projects tied to the 2016 peace negotiations between FARC and the Colombian government. He also served as a consultant for the Colombian Ministry of Justice and a research consultant for the Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University. Torres-Echeverry holds a master's degree in socio-legal studies from Stanford University and bachelor's degrees in law and economics from Universidad de los Andes in Colombia.

USIP Peace Scholar Fellow

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • University of Chicago
  • “Between War and Peace: Political Organizing in Twenty-First Century Colombia.”
Kristin Weis

Kristin Weis

Dissertation Summary

As Arctic coastal communities face acute impacts of climate change, increased global interest and geopolitical dynamics, they also face new and emerging conflicts related to tourism and sense of place—the relationship people have with a place and with each other. With qualitative data collected in Svalbard and among key Arctic experts, Kristin Weis’s dissertation explores the relationship between power and legitimacy and how resilience and conflict interact. Her findings provide a new, innovative approach to understanding conflict in the Arctic that aims to inform decision-making at local, national and international scales.

Biography 

Weis’ research explores rapid changes in the Arctic and the relationship between resilience, tourism, sense of place and conflict. Weis’ research has been supported by the National Science Foundation’s Navigating the New Arctic Program, The Society of Woman Geographers Evelyn L. Pruitt National Fellowship, and the Carter School. Her research has been published in the Fund for Peace and Tourism Geographies. Weis authored a chapter in Towards Coastal Resilience and Sustainability. Weis holds a master's degree in resource management (MRM) from the University of Akureyri, Iceland, and a bachelor's degree in international affairs from the George Washington University.

Minerva Peace and Security Scholar

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • George Mason University
  • “Arctic Change: Charting the Relationship Between Sense of Place, Social-ecological Resilience, and Conflict.”
Lily Wojtowicz

Lily Wojtowicz

Dissertation Summary

Extended nuclear deterrence—the threat that an attack on an ally will elicit a response with the potential to escalate to nuclear use—faces a particularly stark commitment problem. The costs to a state using its nuclear arsenal range from retaliation in kind to international condemnation due to the stigma of nuclear use. Since the dawn of the nuclear age, U.S. allies have frequently wondered, as de Gaulle famously asked, “Would the United States trade New York for Paris?” Lily Wojtowicz asks why, in moments when U.S. credibility is in crisis, to the degree that allies consider alternative means of security, do the vast majority decide to retain the status quo?

Biography

Wojtowicz research interests include Russian foreign policy, nonproliferation and public opinion. She has previously worked for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation. Her research has been published in Security Studies. Wojtowicz holds a master's degree in nonproliferation and terrorism studies from Monterey Institute of International Studies and a bachelor's degree in international relations from Beloit College.

Minerva Peace and Security Scholar

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • American University
  • “Extended Nuclear Deterrence: How Allies Assess Credibility During Credibility Crises.”
Ilyssa Yahmi

Ilyssa Yahmi

Dissertation Summary

How does smuggling in wartime affect the production of violence by non-state armed groups? Ilyssa Yahmi’s dissertation examines the relationship between non-state governance driven by smuggling and political violence in the Sahel region. In the absence of formal political structures of governance, economic networks – even informal – fill that vacuum. Smuggling constitutes a political strategy that allows rebel groups to impose territorial sovereignty in contested areas and break apart from a central state, thus reinforcing state repression and leading to conflict escalation. This implies that rebel groups reliant on smuggling revenue and networks engage in a form of governance that incites them to minimize targeting civilians whereas other groups are more likely resort to indiscriminate violence.

Biography

Yahmi is a research fellow for the Cross-Border Conflict, Evidence, Policy and Trends Programme (XCEPT), and an alumna of the Fulbright program. She investigates how non-traditional security issues related to borderland governance and economies, identity and migration contribute to understanding political, social and cultural forces globally. Yahmi holds a master's degree in international security from the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po (Paris, France) and a master’s certificate in national defense and security from the French Institute of Higher Studies in National Defense (IHEDN).

Minerva Peace and Security Scholar

  • Ph.D. Candidate
  • Temple University
  • “Business in Conflict: The Effects of Smuggling on the Production of Violence.”