I received my BA from McGill University (2001) and MA (2003) and PhD (2011) in Political Science from the University of British Columbia. Then and now, my research agenda has focused on various dimensions of human rights and justice through the lenses of international politics and security. Please contact me to request copies of any of the following publications.

“Cultural Genocide in Law and Politics” in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 20 September 2023.

The violent and nonviolent repression of cultural groups, or using cultural means to destroy a group, is often identified as “cultural genocide.” The concept’s association with genocide, the “crime of crimes,” suggests it is of serious international concern. Yet contestation over its meaning and application has rendered cultural genocide more of a rhetorical tool than a crime that can be prevented or punished. The scholarly literature on this subject demonstrates that academics and policymakers have been hampered by legal debates and states’ political interests, from Lemkin’s original conception of genocide and the UN Genocide Convention negotiations to the ad hoc responses to “real world” cultural genocide cases. The legal debates have centered around whether cultural genocide can fit within the limits of the Convention’s definition of genocide, that is, the specific intent to destroy, specific protected groups as victims, and so on, and the assumption that genocide is primarily the physical destruction of a group by violent means. Interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural genocide, particularly from anthropology, have shown that cultural genocide is diverse in practice; while not always physically violent in its means or ends, it is closely associated with historical and modern cases of settler colonialism. The politics of cultural genocide has historically been manifested in the politicized negotiations of the Genocide Convention and UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, in which the self-interests of many states precluded any specific mention of cultural means of genocide. In the early 21st century, debates about who should be considered a cultural group and the utility of identifying cultural genocide without its criminalization have resulted in a lack of recognition and response to group destruction.

“The International Criminal Court and the Lawfare of Judicial Intervention” in International Relations, Vol. 30, Issue 4 (2016): 409-431. Sept 2, 2015.  

The contentious concept of “lawfare” has proliferated to various foreign policy areas and permeated a discourse on the function and legitimacy of law in conflict. The concept seems particularly apt to the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) judicial interventions. In this context, I define lawfare as the coercive and strategic element of international criminal justice in which the ICC’s judicial interventions are used as a tool of lawfare for State Parties and the United Nations Security Council to pursue political ends. I argue that there are two types of political ends being pursued with this lawfare: conflict resolution and politicized prosecutions. First, the ICC’s spokespersons, advocates, and supporting states have cultivated a discourse that justice is a means to peace. As a result, the ICC has been used as a means of intervention in ongoing conflicts with the expectation that the indictments, arrests and trials of elite perpetrators have deterrence and preventive effects for atrocity crimes. Despite these legitimate intentions and great expectations, there is little evidence of the efficacy of justice as a means to peace. Second, the other manifestation of lawfare represents an abuse or manipulation of the ICC for political gain. Specifically, States Parties have strategically referred their conflict situations to the ICC with the expectation that the referral will result in the removal of their rivals and sanction the impunity of ruling elites. This politicization of international justice has been successful in that most of the ICC’s prosecutions are unjustly one-sided. Evidence of politicized prosecutions has damaged the Court’s credibility as an impartial institution, and raises questions about the desirability of state referrals. Consequently, the ICC’s efficacy and credibility are suffering from lawfare.

“The International Criminal Court and the Politics of Prosecutions” in The International Journal of Human Rights. Vol. 18, No. 4-5, 2014: 444-461.

I assess the credibility of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an impartial and independent institution by demonstrating how state behaviour towards the Court has politicised prosecutions. There are two mechanisms by which prosecutions have become politicised: the referrals of conflict situations to the ICC by political actors, i.e. States Parties to the Rome Statute and United Nations Security Council, and the prospect and degree of state cooperation with the Court. Consequently, prosecutions have targeted only one side of the conflict and reflect the strategic political interests of the referring actors but promise a greater degree of state cooperation. The case studies selected here present variation in the nature of referrals and degree of cooperation, making for an instructive comparison and revealing an identifiable pattern of politicisation.

 “Transnational Advocacy for Accountability: From Declarations of Anti-Impunity to Implementing the Rome Statute” (with Michael Schroeder) in Implementation and World Politics: How International Norms Change Practice. Alexander Betts and Phil Orchard (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.  

“Judicial and Non-Judicial Mechanisms” in the Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice. Lavinia Stan and Nadya Nedelsky (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

“The International Normative Structure of Transitional Justice” (PhD Dissertation). The University of British Columbia, 2011.

The international normative structure of transitional justice is defined by four interrelated norms: a hierarchical division of criminality, accountability, localization, and reconciliation. The primary contribution of this dissertation is to explain the effects of this structure with a comparative analysis of each norm’s salience and implementation. I therefore juxtapose what is expected in principle to what is possible in practice. The empirical focus analyzes the causal effects of the international normative structure, with the above measures, in Rwanda, East Timor, and the International Criminal Court. Individually, the case studies provide rich contextual detail on how the various norms shaped decision-making and institutions. The diversity in the transitional justice institutions is thus juxtaposed to the consistency in which the norms are salient across the cases and in their implementation challenges, lending credence to the influential effects of the international normative structure of transitional justice.

“After Arusha: Gacaca Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda” in African Studies Quarterly, Vol. 8 No. 1 (2004).