Sean Paul Ashley

I am a President's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland and a Civil War Paths Fellow (non-residential) at the Centre for the Comparative Study of Civil War. From 2023-2024, I was the Niehaus Postdoctoral Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and International Security at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, and a Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at Notre Dame International Security Center. In May 2023, I received my Ph.D. from the Harvard University Department of Government.

My book project examines the aftermath of rebel victories in civil war. Rebel victories produce radically dissimilar postwar orders – some newborn rebel regimes succumb to renewed conflict, state failure, and regime breakdown, yet others successfully establish powerful postwar states, durable regimes and lasting peace. I advance a novel theory to explain this variation, drawing upon archival research, field interviews with rebel elites in East Africa, and an original dataset capturing information on the organizational characteristics of all rebel victors and their successor regimes from 1945 – 2014. You can find more details about my book project here. 

My research has received the Patricia Weitsman Award from the International Studies Association (2024), the Ralph Bunche Best Graduate Student Paper Award (2023) from the African Politics Conference Group Section of the American Political Science Association, and was shortlisted for the Conflict Research Society Cedric Smith Prize (2023). You can find more details about my current research agenda here.

My broader research and teaching interests include (1) the legacies of war, conflict, and authoritarian rule, and (2) authoritarian survival in the post-Cold War era, with a regional focus on Africa and the Global South. I have received generous research and writing support from the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Harvard Program on Negotiation and the Laura Bassi Editing Press.

I received my BA in Politics (honors) from Princeton University. For more information, find my CV here.