Hello!

I am an Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs at the University of Denver and the Director of the Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative (IGLI), which advances research, education, and programs aimed at strengthening the work of feminist activists fighting for democracy, peace, and human rights across the world. We regularly host or co-host summits and institutes for activists, academics, community members, and more as part of IGLI — for instance, check out our Feminist Peace Summit, Feminist Peace Playbook, or take a look at our 2024-25 Annual Report. We also released a the podcast What the World Will Become, with a Spanish-language mini second season in 2025. For this work, I received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from President Biden in 2025, which is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government to early career researchers.

My academic research focuses on war, gender, activism, and politics. My first book, War, Women, and Power: From Violence to Mobilization in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina (Cambridge University Press 2018), investigated the impact of mass violence on women's political mobilization. My second book project is titled “There Are Things You Cannot Choke in Blood,” and features seven stories of care and creativity from seven cases of mass atrocities, including stories about the theater scene in Sarajevo during the siege, the power of music in Aleppo, and queer dancers under paramilitary occupation in Colombia.

Together with Milli Lake (LSE), my research critically examines women’s empowerment interventions after war. With an incredible collective of women, we ran the Women’s Rights After War (WRAW) Project (2019 - 2025), which aimed to evaluate how women’s empowerment initiatives shape different women’s lives. Through this project, we explored how we can expand our understandings of women’s experiences during and after violence through mediums other than writing — we are in awe of the dancers, singers, and artists that work on these same topics and have so much to teach us. Check out our digital archive here and watch for a special issue of Security Dialogue coming in December 2025.

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