I am Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and faculty fellow of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies (SIWPS) and Institute for Latin American Studies (ILAS). I received a BA from Stanford University (Phi Beta Kappa), a MSc with distinction from London School of Economics, and PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I have held fellowships at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and Latin American Studies Program at Princeton University.
I am the author of Organized Violence after Civil War: The Geography of Recruitment in Latin America, published in 2016 by Cambridge University Press in its Studies in Comparative Politics series. It was runner-up for the 2017 Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Prize and is based on my PhD dissertation, which was awarded the Lucian Pye Award for the Best Dissertation in Political Science.
My second book, Violent Victors: Why Bloodstained Parties Win Postwar Elections, was published by Princeton University Press in its International Politics and History series in November 2022. For this research, I was a named a 2018 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and received the Minerva-United States Institute of Peace, Peace and Security Early Career Scholar Award. The book won the 2024 Gregory Luebbert Prize for the Best Book in Comparative Politics from the American Political Science Association and the 2023 Leon Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the American Political Science Association. It was also Honorable Mention for the 2023 Luebbert Best Book Prize.
I am currently working on two books: 1) on the leading cause of death around the world – criminal violence – and why it is such an intractable problem; and 2) on great power statecraft and the geopolitical alignment of countries in the Global South.
My research on war and peace, democracy, organized crime, and geopolitics has appeared in World Politics, British Journal of Political Science, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Comparative Politics, Journal of Peace Research, and Political Analysis, among other outlets. My Journal of Peace Research article was Honorable Mention for the Nils Petter Gleditsch JPR Article of the Year Award.
My research has been funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies, Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Fulbright Program, United States Institute of Peace, Folke Bernadotte Academy, Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Minerva Initiative.
I am a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and an affiliate of Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. I am part of the Advisory Network to the United Nations on Security Sector Reform (SSR). I have advised the Colombian Government and the Organization of American States. My policy writing has appeared in Americas Quarterly, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, and El Tiempo.