Dr Nick Barnes
Associate Member

Nicholas Barnes is a Lecturer at the University of St. Andrews in the School of International Relations and affiliated faculty at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence. He holds an MSc from University College Dublin in Nationalism and Ethno-Communal Conflict (2009) and received his PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (2017) in political science. He was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs (2017-2019), a recipient of a Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship (2017), and several other research fellowships (British Academy, Fulbright-Hays, NSF, and SSRC). Nicholas’ research focuses on the topics of organized crime, political violence, non-state governance, and citizen resistance and mobilization. He has conducted 3 years of fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and is currently working on a book project (under contract with Cambridge University Press) about how and why gangs govern these communities. His academic work has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, Current Sociology, Latin American Research Review, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. He also collaborates with favela artists and activists through visual media projects and exhibits. See more at www.nicholasjohnbarnes.com.