Genocidal dehumanisation and mobilisation
My current research focuses on discourse, insecurity, and political organisation before and during instances of genocidal violence. By paying attention to the language and politics of ‘existential threat’ found in dehumanisation, I suggest that we can better understand the targeting and form of mass killing, and more.
To do this, I draw upon a wide range of theoretical and academic disciplines, including genocide studies, securitisation theory, political sociology, social and political psychology, international relations, discourse and content analysis, and literary analysis. I conduct mixed-methods research, with a particular focus on examining archives, primary sources, and ‘grey literature’. My primary case studies include Germany, Rwanda, and the Former Yugoslavia, but I apply my findings to a wider range of cases of ethnic violence, including Armenia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Indonesia, anti-Native American genocide in the European colonisation of California, and anti-Aboriginal genocide in Australia, as well as other cases of ethnic prejudice such as anti-Muslim sentiment in the West, and the 2012 anti-Black race riots in Tel Aviv.
I am currently researching the implications of this for genocide prevention and early warning.
Post-conflict justice and complementarity
I pursue a secondary research interest in post-conflict justice and accountability processes, with a particular focus on the interaction between international bodies like the ICC and the less-studied phenomenon of domestic trial processes for atrocity crimes. I focus particularly on the politics of such processes – what the logistics, political agreements, and treaty infrastructure underpinning trial processes are – and have co-authored several articles on the concept of ‘positive complementarity’.
I have an ongoing research partnership with Professor Dan Plesch, of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, on the 1943-1948 United Nations War Crimes Commission. As part of this, I have amassed considerable archival expertise on this little-known organisation working in parallel to the Nuremberg Tribunals, digitising and sourcing primary documents, producing archival guides, and presenting to academics and practitioners working in the international criminal justice field.
Ideology and organisation
Underpinning my work has been an interest on what makes organisations function – how ideology and cognitive factors interact with the bureaucratic, organisational, and systems politics of subnational, national, transnational, and international groups. This leads me to pursue a cross-cutting programme of research drawing on a wide range of disciplines within international relations – securitisation, foreign policy analysis, nuclear safety theory, and institutional memory.