Research lines
I. Causes of civilian displacement during war and wartime dynamics
What explains wartime displacement? In my first book and related publications, I conceptualize displacement as an interaction between armed groups and civilians and argue that different forms stem from how armed groups target civilians: selective targeting is associated with individual escape, indiscriminate targeting with mass evasion, and collective targeting (based on shared traits) with political cleansing. This disaggregation allows us to explain different forms of displacement that contribute to the overall scale of this massive form of wartime violence. During the Colombian civil war, democratic reforms led armed groups to target civilians who supported political rivals collectively, which led to an increase in displacement and made political cleansing a feature of the war, even in the absence of an ethnic cleavage.
Related work:
2017. Democracy and Displacement in Colombia’s Civil War. Cornell University Press.
2020. Spanish translation: Democracia y desplazamiento en la guerra civil colombiana. Bogotá: Editorial Universidad del Rosario.
2023. "Social Control in Civil Wars," with Corinna Jentzsch. Civil Wars. Special Issue, 25th Anniversary.
2018. “Democracy and Civil War: The Case of Colombia,” with Livia I. Schubiger. Conflict Management and Peace Science.
2018. “IDP Resettlement and Collective Targeting during Civil War: Evidence from Colombia.” Journal of Peace Research.
2016. “Warfare, Political Identities, and Displacement in Spain and Colombia,” with Laia Balcells. Political Geography.
2015. “True Believers, Deserters, and Traitors: Who Leaves Insurgent Groups and Why,” with Ben Oppenheim, Juan F. Vargas and Michael Weintraub. Journal of Conflict Resolution.
2011. “Electing Displacement: Political Cleansing in Apartadó, Colombia.” Journal of Conflict Resolution.
2009. “Seeking Safety: Displacement and Targeting in Civil Wars.” Journal of Peace Research. Vol 46, No. 3. 419-430.
II. Responses to displacement and wartime violence
Displacement is a massive feature of wartime violence. What are the political implications of displacement? How do states and civilians respond?
In Government Responses to Internal and International Displacement (GRIID), a new project with Stephanie Schwartz (LSE) and Adam Lichtenheld (IPL, Stanford), we conceptualize government responses as de jure and de facto, and liberal or restrictive, and argue that governments frequently engage in restrictive or respressive responses to the displaced, even while they adopt liberal policies on paper. We are working on a book manuscript.
Related work:
2024. "The politics of forced displacement and how states respond." with Stephanie Schwartz and Adam Lichtenheld. Researching Internal Displacement blog.
2024. "State Policies on Internal Displacement (SPID): Introducing a global dataset," with Adam Lichtenheld. In progress.
2024. "Government responses to internal and international displacement (GRIID)," with Adam Lichtenheld and Stephanie Schwartz. In progress.
Civilians also respond to the displacement they face and state institutions in a variety of ways. I am also working on a book manuscript detailing how one family responded over more than two decades and under a variety of transitional justice regimes in Colombia.
Related work:
2025 (online first). "The bureaucracy of reparations and political engagement," with Michael Weintraub and Sebastián Pantoja-Barrios. Comparative Politics.
Forthcoming. "Rebel governance and political participation," with Michael Weintraub. In Institutional Legacies of Violent Conflict: Development and State-Building in the Shadow of Wartime Institutional Change, Ed Patricia Justino. Oxford University Press.
2019. “Civilian Resettlement Patterns in Civil Wars.” Journal of Peace Research. Special Issue on Refugees, Forced Migration, and Conflict.
2025. "Displacement, diversity and dispute resolution in war-affected Colombia," with Sebastián Pantoja-Barrios and Alejandra Ortiz Ayala. Under review.
III. Political development and the state
My third line of work focuses on how institutions and civilian engagement with them -- often in the context or aftermath of war -- influences political development and the state. With Juan Masullo (Leiden/Milano), I am working on a book on how the transnational prohibition of the drug trade constrains possibilities for non-violent political order and democracy in Latin America.
Related work:
2024. "Civil war legacies, the prohibition of the drug trade, and armed politics in Latin America." Review essay, Latin American Politics and Society.
2025 (online first). "The micro-foundations of peace: Attitudes towards the implementation of Colombia's peace agreement in war-affected regions," with Silvia Otero-Bahamón, Sebastián Pantoja-Barrios, Casper Kurpan, Helga Malmin Binningsbø. International Peacekeeping.
2024. "Competitive state-building and civilian response in Colombia," with Sebastián Pantoja-Barrios and Jacob N. Shapiro. In progress.
2023. “Introducing the Mapping Attitudes, Perceptions and Support (MAPS) dataset on the Colombian Peace Process,” with Michael Weintraub, Sebastián Pantoja-Barrios, Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, Helga Malmin Binningsbø, and Marianne Dahl. Journal of Peace Research.
2020. “Subnational Variation across States: A Typology and Research Agenda,” with Imke Harbers. Introduction to special issue "The Subnational State in Latin America," Latin American Politics and Society.
2018. “Endogenous Taxation in Ongoing Internal Conflicts: The Case of Colombia,” with Rafael Ch, Jacob N. Shapiro, and Juan F. Vargas. American Political Science Review.
2017. “Constraining the Samurai: Rebellion and Taxation in Early Modern Japan,” with Christopher Paik and Seiki Tanaka. International Studies Quarterly.
2017. “Subcontracting State-building.” with Jacob N. Shapiro. Small Wars and Insurgencies.