Dr Christine Cheng

Personal website and blog: Dr Christine Cheng

Research Interests

Dr Christine Cheng is the Bennett Boskey Fellow in Politics and International Relations at Exeter College, University of Oxford. She has a DPhil in Politics (Nuffield, Oxford). Her dissertation developed the concept of extralegal groups and proposed a theoretical framework for thinking about their impact on statebuilding in the aftermath of war. Using Liberia as her country case, Christine tests the framework against six extralegal group case studies in the rubber, diamonds, and timber sectors.

Christine has conducted field research in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa, and Guatemala. She spent six months in Liberia in 2005 and 2007 and was one of the first academic researchers to return to Liberia after the civil war ended. She was the 2009 Cadieux- Léger Fellow at Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. She is interviewed about her dissertation research here

Christine’s other research interests include: fragile and failed states, organized crime, peacebuilding, the UN, West African politics, corruption, conflict financing, and women in politics.

She has worked for the UN, the World Bank, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. She has an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. As an undergraduate, she studied systems design engineering at the University of Waterloo.

Teaching

Christine teaches Introduction to International Relations (IR214) to Exeter students and also to visiting students participating in the Williams-Exeter Programme.

If you would like a letter of reference from Christine, please read this notice before making your request.

Publications

• Co-editor (with Dominik Zaum), Selling the Peace: Corruption and Post-conflict Peacebuilding. (Routledge, August 2011).
  Contributors: Roberto Belloni, Per Bergling, Boris Divjak and Michael Pugh, Alexandra Gillies and Page Dykstra, Jonathan Goodhand, John Heilbrunn, Philippe le Billon, Robert Looney, Zachariah Mampilly, Mark Philp, William Reno, Susan Rose-Ackerman, and Sarah von Billerbeck.
• "Informal Actors and the Post-Conflict Moment" in M. Berdal and D. Zaum The Political Economy of Post-Conflict Statebuilding. (Routledge, 2011)
• With Dominik Zaum, "Corruption in Post-Conflict Transitions and the Role of Natural Resources" in C. Bruch, W.C. Muffett, and S. Nichols, Governance, Natural Resources, and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding. (Earthscan May 2011) .
• With Margit Tavits. Informal Influences in Selecting Female Political Candidates. Political Research Quarterly. Prepublished November 17th, 2009 DOI:10.1177/1065912909349631. (Forthcoming).
• Co-editor (with Dominik Zaum), Special Issue of International Peacekeeping on Post-Conflict Peacebuilding and Corruption, Vol. 15, No. 3, June 2008. Contributors: Per Bergling, Boris Divjak & Michael Pugh, Jonathan Goodhand, Philippe le Billon, Robert Looney, Mark Philp, William Reno, and Susan Rose-Ackerman.
• With Dominik Zaum, Introduction: Key Themes in Peacebuilding and Corruption, International Peacekeeping, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2008.
• With Dominik Zaum, Corruption and Post-conflict Peacebuilding, Working Paper for the Program on States and Security, 2008, New York.