Politics (2020 cohort)
My research focuses on recent urban security and governance programmes undertaken in cities across Latin America. Departing from the prevailing regional trend towards reactive and heavily militarised crackdowns on organised crime, the innovative security programmes on which I focus have instead attempted to foster lasting state order in marginalised urban communities through combining policing interventions with long-term development and reintegration initiatives. These programmes, however, have had varied outcomes, with some having established the basis for sustainable state governance and others having collapsed. I seek to explain this variation, focussing on the interactions between a variety of state and non-state actors, and drawing on cases from Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. My research is informed theoretically by the literature on state building, and applies theoretical precepts from this body of work to help explain the processes of conflict and collaboration which shape governance in contested urban spaces across contemporary Latin America.
