Current projects

My research program asks a question that sits at the center of modern war: why do combatants destroy the things civilians need to survive — and what happens afterward? I pursue it through three connected projects.

Targeting the systems civilians depend on. 

Wars are usually counted in battles won and lives lost. But some of war's deadliest violence works indirectly: when an attacker cuts a city's power, its water treatment stops, its hospitals go dark, and its homes go cold. Using an original, facility-level dataset of infrastructure attacks during the 1991 Gulf War, this project develops a new way of measuring how combatants attack infrastructure — destroying a facility outright, knocking it out temporarily, severing its connections to the wider network, disabling its control systems, or deliberately sparing it. These choices, invisible in existing conflict datasets, shape how many civilians suffer, how severely, and for how long. Two manuscripts from this project are currently under review by journals; drafts are available upon request. Current work extends this framework to Russia's attacks on Ukraine's energy grid since 2022.

Paying for wartime destruction. 

When a war ends, who pays for what was destroyed — and what does the answer reveal about how the international community values different kinds of harm? Drawing on the complete claims record of the United Nations Compensation Commission, which processed reparations for the 1991 Gulf War, this project examines how international institutions assign blame and put a price on wartime damage, including damage to human life and health. Its findings speak directly to the compensation mechanisms now being designed for Ukraine.

Wars against Nature (book project). 

Throughout history, humans have fought three out of every four wars to gain control of territory. But just as often, wars have witnessed combatants and civilians intentionally destroying the very territory over which they started fighting. Why? Wars against Nature explores a behavior that is at once puzzling and recurrent: the deliberate destruction of the natural environment during war. This destruction is never only about landscapes: when combatants burn fields, poison wells, or breach dams, they attack the systems that keep civilians alive, and its human toll can outlast the war itself. Comparing the occurrence of this behavior over time, from the Romans' decision to salt the soil of Carthage in 146 BC to the targeting of dams in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the book asks why this type of destruction has persisted for so long and in so many different parts of the world, drawing on insights from political science, history, law, biology, and psychology.

The IR Lab @ Amherst College, which I direct, is working on this very project. 

Please email me if you want to connect on this project or see the latest version.