Biography

Sarah Daly completed her PhD in Political Science at MIT where she was awarded the Lucian Pye Award for the Best Dissertation in Political Science, and she holds a MSc (Distinction) in Development Studies from London School of Economics and BA (Honors, Distinction, Phi Beta Kappa) in International Relations from Stanford University. She has been a visiting associate research scholar in Latin American Studies at Princeton University, a post-doctoral fellow in Political Science and at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, and a pre-doctoral fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Before joining the faculty at Columbia, Daly was Assistant Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Kroc Institute for International Peace at the University of Notre Dame.

Her book, ‘Organized Violence after Civil War: The Geography of Recruitment in Latin America,’ was published by Cambridge University Press in its Comparative Politics series in 2016. The book explores why some violent organizations choose to demilitarize following peace negotiations, whereas others choose to remilitarize and resume violence instead. It argues that the primary driving force behind a return to organized violence is the variation in recruitment patterns within, and between, the warring groups. The book was Honorable Mention for the Conflict Research Society’s 2017 Best Book of the Year Prize. Forthcoming from Princeton University Press in its International Politics and History series is her second book on why citizens vote for political actors that used violence against the civilian population, for which she was awarded the Minerva-United States Institute of Peace, Peace and Security Early Career Scholar Award and was named a 2018 Andrew Carnegie Fellow.

Daly’s articles on civil war, peace, organized crime, ethnic politics, and transitional justice have appeared or are forthcoming in World Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Political Analysis, Journal of Peace Research, Conflict Management and Peace Science, PS: Political Science and Politics, Conflict, Security & Development, and in several edited volumes. Her Journal of Peace Research article was Honorable Mention for the Nils Petter Gleditsch JPR Article of the Year Award.

Daly’s research has been funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies, Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Fulbright Program, United States Institute of Peace, Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Folke Bernadotte Academy, and Minerva Initiative. She is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is an affiliate of Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

publications

Journal Articles
February 2013

State Strategies in Multi-Ethnic Territories: Explaining Variation in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc

Author(s)
cover link State Strategies in Multi-Ethnic Territories: Explaining Variation in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc
Journal Articles
May 2012

Organizational legacies of violence Conditions favoring insurgency onset in Colombia, 1964–1984

Author(s)
cover link Organizational legacies of violence Conditions favoring insurgency onset in Colombia, 1964–1984