Jennifer M. Dixon

I am an Associate Professor of Political Science at Villanova University. My research focuses on the development of international norms, the politics of memory, genocide and mass atrocity, transitional justice, and international human rights. 

My book, Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan (Cornell University Press, 2018), was awarded the 2019 Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies. The book investigates the sources of stability and change in states' narratives of past atrocities. Drawing on in-depth analyses of the post-World War II trajectories of Turkey's narrative of the 1915-17 Armenian Genocide and Japan's narrative of the 1937-8 Nanjing Massacre, the book unpacks the complex processes through which international pressures and domestic dynamics shape states' narratives and the ways in which state actors negotiate between domestic and international demands in producing and maintaining such narratives. Combining historical richness and analytical rigor, the book draws on more than eight months of fieldwork, including archival research in Turkey and the Netherlands, and over seventy-five interviews conducted in Turkey, Japan, and the United States. My book has been featured in podcast interviews by the Society for Armenian Studies and the New Books Network, and reviewed in Perspectives on Politics, Nationalities Papers, Genocide Studies International, Political Psychology, Nations and Nationalism, H-Diplo, Armenian Weekly, and Choice. 

I am currently working on a co-authored book (with Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch) that traces the trajectory of the international human rights regime from 1945 to the present. Tentatively titled On the Rights Trajectory: International Norm Development and the Post-World War II Human Rights Regime, the book introduces a conceptual model of norm development, which is used to analyze changes over time in the content and strength of five core human rights norms: the prescriptive norms of legal accountability, truth-seeking, and reparations; and the prohibitive norms against genocide and torture. The book's innovative conceptual framework and rigorous evaluation of the origin, trajectory, and status of each of these norms answers persistent international relations theory questions, such as, when does a principled idea become a norm? and how do international norms change and develop over time and space? Combined, the study of these five norms offers an assessment of the development and status of the international human rights regime as a whole.

I have published articles in the European Journal of International Relations, the Journal of Genocide Research, Perspectives on Politics, the International Journal of Middle East Studies, South European Society and Politics, and the International Journal for Education Law and Policy. My work has been recognized with the Outstanding Article Award from the International History and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA), the Mary Parker Follett Prize for the best article on Politics and History by APSA’s Politics and History section, and an Honorable Mention for the Walter Dean Burnham Dissertation Award for the best dissertation in Politics and History by APSA’s Politics and History section.

I hold a PhD and a Master's degree in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and an A.B. in Government from Dartmouth College. Prior to starting at Villanova, I was a Research Fellow in the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. My email address is jennifer [dot] m [dot] dixon [at] villanova [dot] edu.