Paul Staniland

Paul Staniland is a nonresident scholar in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is also an associate professor of political science, chair of the Committee on International Relations, and associate director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago.

Staniland’s research focuses on political violence and international security in South Asia. He is the author of the award-winning book Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse (Cornell University Press, 2014). His scholarly work has been published in refereed journals, including Asian Survey, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Strategic Studies, India Review, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, and Security Studies. He has also published policy-oriented pieces in outlets like the Indian Express, Foreign Affairs, Hindustan Times, War on the Rocks, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, and the Washington Quarterly. 

Staniland is currently finishing a book on patterns of conflict, alliance, and cooperation between governments and non-state armed groups in South Asia, using new concepts, theory, and evidence to systematically explore variation in state-armed group relations since 1947. He is pursuing other work on the domestic politics of foreign policy in South Asia (especially public opinion), leftist insurgencies in democracies, insurgency and counterinsurgency, the use of social media by political actors in Pakistan, and civil-military relations. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago.