Aila Matanock

Aila M. Matanock is an associate professor at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy and IGCC research director for violence, intervention, and order. Her research addresses post-conflict elections, and, most recently, how international and non-state actors engage in security and state security sector reform. She has conducted fieldwork in Colombia, Central America, Melanesia, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere, funded by AusAid, the U.S. Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and others. Her Cambridge University Press book, Electing Peace: From Civil Conflict to Political Participation, won the 2018 Levine Memorial Book Prize. Her work has also been published in the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Daedalus, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and elsewhere. She won the 2024 International Studies Association’s Karl Deutsch award for the most significant contribution to the study of International Relations and Peace Research from a scholar under 45. She has held fellowships at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and UCSD’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. She previously worked at the University of California, Berkeley, and, prior to her Ph.D., the RAND Corporation and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and her A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard University.