Dr. Roya Izadi is an Assistant Professor in the department of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island. Her research interests include political economy of security, civil-military relations, political violence and gender, security sector reform, conflict, and post-conflict settlements. She is interested in understanding the dynamics of contentious politics and political violence using both macro and micro-level methods of analyses. More specifically, her research examines the conditions under which militaries operate within the economic system, the role of security forces in understanding conflict dynamics, and citizens' perceptions of the security forces given the latter's societal role and characteristics. As a member of the GSS lab, she has assisted the MOWIP projects with the Public Security Directorate in Jordan, the Armed Forces of Bangladesh, and the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. Her work has previously been published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution and Research and Politics and has won awards from the Peace Science Society (International), International Studies Association, and the Inter-university Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. Dr. Izadi holds a B.A in Political Science from University of Tehran, an M.A from Miami University, and PhD from SUNY Binghamton.

Zinab Attai is a PhD student in Cornell University's Department of Government with research interests in state building, rebel governance, and gender in conflict-affected areas. Her recent work investigates the institutional legacies of Soviet and US intervention in Afghanistan and its consequences on social service provision. Her research has received support from the National Science Foundation, the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, and Princeton's Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC) program.

Before starting her PhD, Zinab worked as an international survey researcher, managing projects in various countries including Afghanistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. As a Graduate Research Fellow at the GSS lab, she has contributed to projects involving the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, the Public Security Directorate in Jordan, and the Armed Forces of Bangladesh.

Emily Jackson is a PhD student in comparative politics in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Her research interests include social movements, reproductive politics, public opinion, and gender in Latin America and the US. She is particularly interested in exploring instances where people join together to demand reproductive agency and rights from the state, and the conditions under which states adopt progressive reproductive health policies. Emily’s work has been supported by the Einaudi Center for International Studies, the Reppy Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, and the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

Almira Sadykova-DuMond is a Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Gender and Security Sector Lab and a Doctoral Candidate at Binghamton University (SUNY). Her research interests include political violence, human rights, and counterterrorism; with her dissertation assessing the impact of counterterrorism-related curfews on terrorist activity in the Middle East. Almira is highly interested in research that applies Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods to text data in political science. She has experience working with large data collection endeavors through her involvement with CIRIGHTS, the Repression Events Dataset (RED), and Mass Mobilization Project. In addition to holding an M.A. in Political Science from Binghamton University, Almira also holds an M.A. in Political Science from Nazarbayev University and a B.A. in Journalism and Public Relations from Eurasian National University in her native Kazakhstan. She also holds certificates in quantitative methods and machine learning from the International Political Science Association-National University of Singapore Methods School (IPSA-NUS) and the Inter-Consortium for Political Science Research (ICPSR) respectively.

Sky Kunkel is a Gender and Security Sector (GSS) Predoctoral Fellow, a USIP Peace Scholar Fellow, and a Ph.D. Candidate at the Purdue University Department of Political Science, where they are expected to graduate in the Spring of 2024. Broadly, they research non-state actors and violence perpetrated against vulnerable populations. Sky's dissertation focuses on quantifying the local effects of UN peacekeeping missions and examines how peacekeepers' entrance, presence, and exit impact violence. Their dissertation research uses fine-grained, subnational data on the gendered presence of peacekeepers to see which peacekeepers are more likely to prevent violence. They also research private military contractors, such as Russia's Wagner Group, accused of committing war crimes in Ukraine, Mali, and the Central African Republic. Sky is a founding and executive council member of the Junior IO Scholars Workshop. They hold a BA from Purdue University with a major in international relations and a minor in history.

Angie Torres-Beltran is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Government at Cornell University. For the 2023-2024 academic year, Angie is a Research Fellow in the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School; a Predoctoral Fellow with the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego; the Gordon Morgan Fellow at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville; and a United States Institute of Peace Scholar. Her research examines the political causes and consequences of gender-based violence, with an emphasis on political behavior and institutions in conflict-afflicted countries. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Political Science Association, and the Empirical Study of Gender Research Network. Angie holds a MA in Government from Cornell University and BA in International and Global Studies from the University of Central Florida.

DeAnne Roark is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with the Gender and Security Sector Lab. Her primary research interests include gender and conflict, human rights, and peacebuilding. Her dissertation, a book project, explores the cause and effects of justice processes that address legacies of gender inequality and violence against women after episodes of mass violence and human rights abuse. Dr. Roark holds a B.A. and M.A. in Political Science from the University of Texas at Arlington and received her Ph.D. (International Relations/Research Methods) from the University of North Texas. With the GSS Lab, she assists with MOWIP projects as part of the Elsie Initiative.

Janna Solomon is the Gender and Security Sector (GSS) Lab Manager. She has prior experience in an organizational capacity through her work in the not-for-profit sector, secondary and higher education. Her interest in the work that the GSS lab is doing to increase women’s meaningful participation in peacekeeping drew her to this position. She enjoys supportive roles which have a direct impact on people’s lives, and she is excited to see how the lab’s research will provide beneficial changes for the future.

Dr. Laura Huber is an Assistant Professor at the University of Mississippi. Her research interests include security sector reform, conflict, gender, peacekeeping, and political violence. Her work primarily examines how gender norms influence political violence, the impact of conflict and international intervention of women's rights, female peacekeepers, and gender reform in the security sector. In particular, her research explores how women’s integration into and gender norms within security institutions is connected with effectiveness, community relations, abuse of power, and sexual violence and exploitation. She received her Ph.D in Political Science from Emory University in August 2019 and served as a post-doctoral research fellow at Cornell University (2019-2020) where she assisted with the creation and implementation of the Measuring Opportunities for Women in Peacekeeping (MOWIP) Methodology as part of the Elsie Initiative. Her work is published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Perspectives on Politics, and International Peacekeeping.

Sara Fox (Pre-Doc 2021-2022) is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Pittsburgh. Her current research and interests span across regions to examine political violence, the role of international actors in the post-conflict setting, and security sector reform, with a special focus on the role of gender. Sara’s most recent work examines why closed authoritarian regimes initiate legal changes in the area of women’s rights. Additionally, she has previously worked with Pitt’s Gender Equality in Public Administration (GEPA) working-group which tracks gendered data in public administration, particularly in conflict-affected countries, in support of UNDP efforts.

Dr. Priscilla Torres is an Assistant Professor at Wellesley College. Her research focuses on peacebuilding, peacekeeping and gender and conflict. More specifically, her work explores the micro-level conditions under which international peacebuilding is effective, women’s rights after war, the persistence of sexual and gender-based violence in conflict-affected settings, the influence of international peacebuilding on community governance and gender norms, and gender-focused security sector reform. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University in 2023, a United States Institute of Peace (USIP) Fellow (2022-2023), and was a pre-doctoral research fellow at the Gender and Security Sector Lab at Cornell University (2021-2022). While at the GSS Lab, she worked on the ELSIE Initiative, particularly with the Armed Forces of Liberia and with the Norwegian Armed Forces in conducting their Measuring Opportunities for Women in Peacekeeping (MOWIP) assessments. Her work has previously been published in International Studies Quarterly and Populism.

Lindsey Pruett is a graduate student at Cornell University, where she studies the role of militaries within state-building. Her dissertation explores how ground up resistance to military conscription shaped the integration of rural communities into the state in West Africa. In ongoing work, Lindsey is studying how and why post-colonial armies utilize social and economic development programs and how these programs shape public opinion. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Security Education Program and the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Cameron Mailhot is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Arkansas. His research falls broadly into the fields of peace building, peacekeeping, state building, and reconstruction. He is interested in the short- and long-term impacts that international interventions have on societies undergoing post-conflict and post-authoritarian transitions, with a focus on conflict, public opinion, and social and political trust in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, in particular. He is also interested in the political and social legacies of violence and repression. His work is published or forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science, International Studies Quarterly, and Small Wars & Insurgencies.

Michael (Mike) Kriner is a PhD candidate in the Government Department at Cornell University. His research interests are broadly in the areas of peacekeeping and peacebuilding. Mike's dissertation project seeks to understand how participation of non-democracies in United Nations peacekeeping operations impacts operations and their outcomes. Mike was a Lab fellow in the spring and fall of 2021.

Radwa Saad is a doctoral student in the Africana Studies Department at Cornell University. Her current work explores how archetypes of citizenry – with all their normative assumptions of race, gender, and class relations in a given society - are contested, appropriated, or expanded through conscription practices in post-colonial states. More broadly, she is interested in the role of militaries in state-building as well as security sector reform processes and outcomes. She holds an MSc in Security Studies from King's College London and is an alumnus of the African Leadership Center's Peace, Security and Development Program for upcoming African scholars.

Taylor Vincent is a PhD student in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her primary subfield is International Relations with interests in political violence, democratization, post-conflict societies and gender; her secondary field is Comparative Politics. Before starting graduate school at Maryland, she worked for two years for a non-profit in her hometown of St. Louis, MO through the AmeriCorps program. Taylor holds a BA in Political Science and Anthropology from Purdue University and a MA in Political Science from Duke University.

Thalia Gerzso is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Government department at Cornell University and joined the GSS lab in January 2022. Her research broadly focuses on formal institutions and regime change in sub-Saharan Africa. More specifically, her dissertation investigates the conditions under which courts side with opposition in non-consolidated democracies. Prior to joining the Department of Government, Thalia worked as a lawyer and human rights advocate.

Vanessa Navarro-Rodriquez is a Ph.D. student in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on comparative politics and international relations. Her research interests broadly focus on gender dynamics, intersectionality, the abuse of power, and behavior. Vanessa spent the first two years of her Ph.D. researching the prevalence of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by peacekeepers during UN peacekeeping operations. Now, her dissertation looks at indigenous women's agency and their political behavior pertaining to state repression in Chile. Vanessa worked in the lab in 2019 where she assisted with the creation of the Measuring Opportunities for Women in Peacekeeping Methodology as part of the Elsie Initiative.

Dr. Sumin Lee is a Gender and Security Sector (GSS) Lab Affiliate and an Accountability, Climate, Equity, and Scholarship (ACES) Faculty Fellow in the Department of International Affairs of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Her current research focuses on how conflict-affected states strategically use accountability measures for wartime sexual violence as a means to promote their legitimacy and reputation. For her project, she collected an original dataset on various accountability measures adopted during and after civil wars in response to wartime sexual violence. She is also working on multiple projects that examine conflict-related sexual violence and its effect on women’s lives in a post-conflict society using various methods such as geospatial analysis, and text analysis. She has also worked with the NSF-funded Border and Boundaries Project, University of Pennsylvania. She was a Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) 2021-2022 and also a recipient of the Empirical Study of Gender Research Networks (EGEN) Prize 2022.