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I am an Associate Professor and Sussex/Law Advisor in the Department of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University. I am also the Conflict and Security Research Cluster Lead at the Balsillie School for International Affairs, and a Tshepo Institute for the Study of Contemporary Africa Fellow.
I received my PhD (2015) and my HBA (2006) from the University of Toronto, and my MA (2008) from McGill University.
Prior to joining Laurier, I was Professor of Practice in Political Science and International Development at Tulane University (2016-2021). I was also the Simons Research Fellow in Dialogue on International Law and Human Security at Simon Fraser University (2014-2015) and a visiting fellow in international development at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2013-2014).
The core of my research deals with pressing issues in postconflict justice, such as the relationship between conflict-affected communities and international criminal courts, and the efforts to address women and children’s participation in war crimes and mass atrocities. This includes unsettling assumptions about people’s lived experiences in conflict, disturbing binary understandings of victims and perpetrators, and questioning interventions that do not center the voices of individuals most affected by mass violence. My research is rooted in years of ethnographic fieldwork in postconflict settings in East and Central Africa and the Balkans.
My current research program explores the conceptualization of child soldiering across multiple geographic, temporal, and social contexts, including fieldwork in several countries (Bosnia, Cameroon, and Canada). I am the PI on a SSHRC/DNDRI-funded project, Victims, Soldiers or Terrorists? Labelling of Children Associated with Armed Groups (2024-26), that challenges normative assumptions about childhood and agency, exposes embedded colonial and gender ideologies, and disrupts labels and the inequitable representation of children associated with armed groups.
I am interested in supervising graduate students in the areas of children and armed groups (labels and representations of child soldiers; children and agency; children and youth in international relations and security; weaponization of children; children as collateral damage); gender and war; international criminal law; and transitional justice.
Transitional Justice
Women and War
Poverty and Inequality in the Global South
Women, Gender, and Politics