I joined PoLIS as Senior Lecturer in September 2017. Prior to working at the University of Bath, I held a Departmental Lectureship in African Politics at the University of Oxford (2013-2017) and a Junior Research Fellowship at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford (2015-2017). My first academic appointment was as Senior Teaching Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (2012-2013).

I hold a DPhil in International Development from the University of Oxford where my dissertation explored the Rwandan government’s attempts to build unity after the 1994 genocide. More broadly, my research explores the political dynamics of states emerging from mass violence, specifically the politics of reconciliation and nation building, the politics of memory, and the politics of displacement, settlement and camps. My regional focus is the Great Lakes Region of Africa and I have conducted most of my research in Rwanda and Burundi.

I am the author of Making Ubumwe: Power, State and Camps in Rwanda’s Unity-Building Project (Berghahn, 2015), which was shortlisted for the 2016 Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize awarded annually by the African Studies Association. My work has appeared in a wide range of peer reviewed journals including The Journal of Modern African Studies, African Studies Review, Development and Change, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Journal of Refugee Studies, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, as well as edited collections published by Oxford University Press and Palgrave Macmillan.

Research interests

• Conflict
• Security
• Violence & memory
• Displacement