Aila M. Matanock is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research addresses the ways in which international and other outside actors engage in fragile states. She uses case studies, survey experiments, and cross-national data in this work. She has conducted fieldwork in Colombia, Central America, Europe, Melanesia, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. She has received funding for these projects from many sources, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Minerva Research Initiative, the National Center for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism (START), and the Center for Global Development (CGD). Her 2017 book, Electing Peace: From Civil Conflict to Political Participation, was published by Cambridge University Press. It won the 2018 Charles H. Levine Memorial Book Prize and was a runner up for the 2018 Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Prize. It is based on her dissertation research at Stanford University, which won the 2013 Helen Dwight Reid award from the American Political Science Association. Her work has also been published by the Annual Review of Political Science, Governance, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and elsewhere. She worked at the RAND Corporation before graduate school, and she has held fellowships at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at UCSD since. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and her A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard University. You can find her on Twitter @matanock.
Posts by Aila Matanock
- Ten Years of Political Violence At A Glance, December 16, 2022.
- Looking Back at 9/11, September 9, 2021.
- What’s Driving Police Violence in Colombia? June 21, 2021.
- What Happens When Armed Groups Endorse Politicians? November 4, 2020.
- Will the Afghan Peace Talks Succeed? September 18, 2020.
- Violence in Mexico May Be Worse Than You Think, March 18, 2020.
- What We Know About Militant Groups as Political Parties, December 4, 2017.
- How to Distinguish Supporters From Opponents in Counterinsurgency, November 18, 2016.
- Could Colombia’s Peace Process Still Be Derailed? August 18, 2016.
- What Do We Know, and Need to Know, About Successful Counterinsurgency? August 14, 2015.