About

This blog is an opportunity to share some of the interesting things that cross my desk in my research and in my day-to-day reading– an interesting perspective on a controversial issue, experiments with surprising results or a debate that forced me to re-evaluate my principles.  This blog is my way of drawing attention to ideas, opinions, and ways of thinking that have succeeded in capturing my imagination.

The broad focus is on politics, especially the issues that I follow closely: Africa, conflict, corruption, organized crime, natural resources, international development, and gender equality. But you can see from my posts that I also write on many other issues such as the environment, food politics, education, the impact of technology, relationships, parenthood, Canadian foreign policy, and American politics.

At the University of Oxford, I teach international relations and conduct research on post-conflict transitions, peacekeeping, civil war, African politics, corruption, and women in politics. Formally, I’m the Bennett Boskey Research Fellow in Politics and International Relations at Exeter College, Oxford.

I did my graduate studies at Oxford (DPhil Politics, Nuffield College) and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton (MPA). I spent a year as a visiting student at Yale with the Order, Conflict, and Violence program in Political Science. I also have a BASc in systems design engineering from the University of Waterloo (and spent a year studying at Tottori University in Japan).

For more information on my extralegal groups research, I talk about it in this video interview. I’m currently working on a book manuscript on Extralegal Groups (under contract with Oxford University Press) building on my doctoral research in Liberia. I also co-edited Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Selling the Peace? with Dominik Zaum. (Chapter abstracts here.) It came out in September 2011 (Routledge). There is more information about my research and publications here.

On Twitter, I am @cheng_christine. I regularly comment on international affairs for a variety of media outlets including the BBC, the Wall Street Journal, al Jazeera, Radio France International, and Real Clear World. I also  maintain a page on academia.edu.

You can email me at christine.cheng at politics.ox.ac.uk.