Welcome

Mandela House, Soweto, South Africa, 2024

I am a final-year PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at University College London (UCL). In Fall 2024, I am a visiting researcher at the Center for Political Studies (CPS) at the University of Michigan. My research interests lie at the intersection of international relations and contentious politics with a research agenda that evolves around the study of difficult-to-observe conflict processes. I try to better understand both formal and informal relations (coalitions, alliances) between conflict actors through the collection of original primary data during fieldwork and the analysis of this data through multi methods designs, using historical process tracing and spatial econometric approaches.

In my dissertation, I focus on organizational alliances in the anti-apartheid opposition in South Africa, examining why some organizations enter formal alliances even if it further exposes them to state repression, while others maintain informal links. I leverage primary data from three archives in South Africa and construct a dataset with cooperative and competitive relations for 151 anti-apartheid organizations (political parties, trade unions, religious organizations, student organizations, civic organizations, armed groups). My findings provide evidence for a web of formal and informal relations between organizations. Archival insights suggest that organization leaders strategically distinguish between formal and informal relations, formalizing their relations when facing repression, and maintaining informal links with more controversial partners. This work suggests that fragmenmted and divided multi-actor conflict settings might be more interconnected than anticipated and urges policymakers to take conflict relations seriously e.g. when devising negotiations.

I have expanded my research agenda through several additional projects in addition to the dissertation. My research is forthcoming in the Journal of Peace Research. My work in progress looks at the impact of international sanctions on alliances in conflict and the logic of alliance building in resistance movements under repression. I have furthermore started a co-authored large-N cross-national data collection project on informal alliances, measuring defection and co-membership on the African continent.