Costantino Pischedda

I am Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at the University of Miami.

I hold a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University and an MA in Strategic Studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). In 2015-16 I was Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance.

My research interests cover various topics in International Relations and International Security: civil war dynamics (in particular, relations among rebel groups), counterinsurgency, ethnic conflict, religion and violence, civilian victimization in war and terrorism, non-violent resistance, natural resources and state-minority disputes, coercion, the implications of emotions for coercive bargaining, and (in an ongoing book project) the effects of cognitive biases on preventive war logic.

My book, Conflict Among Rebels: Why Insurgent Groups Fight Each Other (Columbia University Press), explains why and under what circumstances rebel groups pitted against a common enemy (the government) fight one other.

My academic pieces have been published in International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, International Security, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Middle East Policy, Parameters, African Security Review,  The International Spectator, Contemporary Security Policy, European Journal of International Security, and Ethnopolitics. I wrote opinion and policy pieces for the blogs of The National Interest, The Washington Post,  Political Violence @ A Glance, and Vox.

I previously worked as research analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the World Bank’s Development Economics Research Group, and the World Bank Institute in Washington, DC.

I was born and raised in Sardinia and went to college in Florence (Italy). In my free time I hit tennis balls and spear fish.