Research

Present Research/Professional Speciality

My recent research studies social cohesion in the context of civilian displacement and resettlement during and post-civil wars in the context of Colombia and New Zealand. My research experience involves project management, coordinating and conducting field-work in fragile and violent contexts with subjects such as victims of war, and combatants. My research aims to prevent violence and intergroup conflict. I have particular expertise studying the security sector's role in peace processes, including transitional justice, state-building, and post-war violence, in Latin America. I have also analysed the influence of ideology on people, political behaviour, violence mobilization, radicalism and armed groups' behaviour in context of civil war. My PhD dissertation, War Mentality and Post-Peace Accord Violence: A Field Experiment of Political-ideological Bias among Colombian Soldiers, combines insights from political science and the political and social psychology of intergroup conflicts to develop and test a theory of individual and institutional bias. I also have a special interest in analysing intergroup reconciliation between victims and perpetrators and social and political reintegration of ex-combatants from non-state armed groups. Methodologically, I have experience analysing public opinion surveys and implementing mixed methods – including lab-in-the-field experiments, survey experiments, semi-structural and in-depth interviews, and conducting multilevel analyses. Currently, I am a research assistant on a participatory action research project with refugee-background young people in southern New Zealand.

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