I study international courts and lawyers, with a primary focus on how discourse about conflict-related sexual violence is reproduced and contested in international criminal law spaces. My work builds upon poststructural, feminist, and queer IR theory to trace how prosecutors, diplomats, judges, and NGOs interpret claims of sexual violence. As a case study, I examine the role of gendered narratives in justice efforts for the Rohingya genocide, including the ongoing cases at the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court. I am also interested in broader questions of international law, drawing from critical legal theory to examine how the colonial and gendered logics of law influence the current politics of international justice.
In addition to my PhD research, I am a visiting scholar at the Paris Human Rights Centre (CRDH) at the Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas; I was also a visiting scholar at the Center for International Criminal Justice at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in early 2022. I previously worked as a research assistant for the GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub and have peer reviewed articles about sexual violence and law for a number of journals including International Affairs, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, the International Journal of Transitional Justice, the Journal of International Criminal Justice, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. At LSE, I am affiliated with the Mannheim Doctoral Working Group at the Mannheim Centre for Criminology and serve on the editorial board of Millennium: Journal of International Studies.
In 2023 I will be on the US law teaching market and welcome any questions from search committee members. I previously earned a JD from Cornell Law School, where I worked as an Articles Editor for the Cornell International Law Journal. Prior to that, I earned an MA from New York University and a BA from Brigham Young University. I use any pronouns.
Research topic
The construction, reproduction, and contestation of sexual victimhood discourse in international criminal law
Supervisors
Mark Hoffman
Johann Koehler
Laura Sjoberg
Research Cluster affliation
International Institutions, Law and Ethics Research Cluster
Theory/Area/History Research Cluster