Monica Duffy Toft, Professor of Government and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, has been named the 2015-2016 World Politics Fellow at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). World Politics, which is the leading journal of International Relations and produced under the editorial sponsorship of PIIRS, sponsors this prestigious annual visiting fellowship.
The fellowship will give Monica an opportunity to focus on her research, which includes international security, ethnic and religious violence, civil wars and demography. Her most recent books include: Securing the Peace (Princeton, 2011); Political Demography (with Jack Goldstone and Eric Kaufmann, Oxford, 2012); and God’s Century (with Daniel Philpott and Timothy Shah, Norton, 2012).
She has also published numerous scholarly articles and editorials on civil wars, territory and nationalism, demography and religion in global politics. Her most recent article, co-authored with Yuri Zhukov, is called “Islamists and Nationalists: Rebel Motivation and Counterinsurgency in Russia’s North Caucasus” and will be published in the American Political Science Review in May 2015.
Monica plans to spend her time at Princeton investigating demographic dynamics of groups within states to discern whether or how demographic shifts contribute to state stability or failure. Although she has already published related academic articles, she will focus on pulling together these ideas into a book-length treatment of the subject.
“As Tutor for Admissions, Professor Toft is an energetic founding faculty member of the Blavatnik School,” said Dean Ngaire Woods. “I’m delighted that Monica Toft has won this prestigious fellowship with Princeton University. However, I know I speak for everyone at the School in saying how much we look forward to welcoming Monica back to Oxford for the 2016 academic year.”
