Research

Most of my work falls within one of three main research agendas: the structural drivers of conflict and cooperation, the domestic politics of foreign policy, and diversity in the political science profession.

Book: Urban War and Urban Peace: International Security in the Golden Age of Cities

More than half of the world's population now lives in cities, a trend that will intensify in ​the coming decades. This global move from countryside to cities is one of the most important transformations in modern history, with far-reaching political, social, and strategic consequences. In this book, I argue that just as urban-industrial centers became the backbone of the modern economy and the modern war machine, they also proved vulnerable to new destructive technologies, nuclear and conventional alike. The prospect of large-scale war became indissociable from the potential wholesale destruction of cities. I also show that despite the global convergence toward urban living, persistent and drastic variation in spatial concentration has also meant that some countries are especially vulnerable to the new realities of war. Using a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, I show that this combination of demographic, geographic, and technological transformations, and the inequalities they create, have had a profound impact on how policy-makers think about and practice national security, affecting major decisions regarding whether to resort to violence, how to behave in crises, what nuclear strategies to adopt, and how to structure nuclear forces. I also explore the challenges states face in limiting vulnerability by directly manipulating urban geography and some of the coping mechanisms societies have adopted, either consciously or unconsciously, to deal with the anxieties of urban life in an age of urban war.

Ongoing projects

I am also engaged in research projects on: urban geography and criminal governance; the neglected importance of Cold War dynamics in quantitative studies of crisis behavior; the domestic politics of US China policy in the Cold War, and; how psychological and sociocultural biases affect the career prospects of women in national security spaces in the US and Canada.

Past research

My previous research covers, among other topics: urban concentration and civil wars; balance of power dynamics and international authority; the role of gender in the peer-review process; Chinese foreign and economic policies; the political economy of China-Latin America relations; conceptual issues in terrorism and political violence; and the challenges to trust-building and cooperation among nuclear rivals. Click here for a full list of publications.