My research is centrally concerned with how and why large-scale political violence, in particular genocide, occurs. I also teach and publish in the areas of human rights, African politics, electoral violence, atrocity prevention, post-conflict politics, and International Studies.
My interest in political violence emerged from my time as a journalist in East and Central Africa in the mid-1990s. In particular, my experiences covering war and its aftermath in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo shaped my academic commitments.
My first major research project focused on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. My second major research project compared genocide and non-genocide cases. My third major research project was an overview of the field of genocide and mass atrocities prevention. I have also written a textbook on International Studies, co-authored with Barry Driscoll; a new edition will be available later this year (2025). I have published additional books on post-genocide Rwanda, human rights, and African politics. I am currently working on a book on politics after civil war, as well as projects on Islamist insurgencies in the Sahel, ongoing debates on the concept of genocide, especially after Gaza, and African International Relations. I served as a co-editor for the Cambridge World History of Genocide, which was published in 2023, and co-editor of The State, Ethnicity, and Gender: The Intellectual Legacies of Crawford Young, which was published in 2024.
I previously served as co-editor African Affairs and as co-editor of a journal I helped found in 2019, Violence. I also co-edit a book series on human rights.
You can learn about my published work here.