Bethany Lacina

Predoctoral Fellow, Center on Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law, Stanford University

Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Civil War, PRIO

Welcome to my website. I am a PhD candidate at the Stanford University Department of Political Science. I am also a predoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law at Stanford and a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Civil War  at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo.

I am interested in political violence and civil conflict, particularly the problem of why normal politics fails to prevent violence. I have studied this question in the context of Indian language group politics, with a focus on Northeast India.

I also reseach the effects of the international system on conflict through my work with the PRIO Battle Deaths project.

My dissertation, entitled "The origins of political violence: Autonomy demands and conflict in India, 1951-89," offers an interest group theory of how normal politics breaks down into violence. Please see my dissertation summary  for more details.

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