Dr Christine Cheng
Personal website and blog: Dr Christine Cheng
Research Interests
Christine Cheng is the Bennett Boskey Fellow in Politics and International Relations at Exeter College, University of Oxford. She is also completing her doctorate in politics at the University of Oxford (Nuffield College). Her dissertation is entitled “Extralegal Groups, Natural Resources, and Statebuilding After War: Explaining Outcomes in Liberia”. It deals with ex-combatant groups that have taken over natural resource areas in the aftermath of war and the problem that these groups pose for long-term statebuilding. Christine has conducted field research in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa, and Guatemala. 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.
Publications
- With Margit Tavits. Informal Influences in Selecting Female Political Candidates. Political Research Quarterly. Forthcoming 2010.
- 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.
