Research

In my dissertation, I examine the role of history education (or its lack) in post-conflict peacebuilding. While many view confronting and teaching youth the past as key to reconciling from it and inspiring a "never again" mindset, many post-conflict governments instead attempt to erase their violent histories, avoiding discussion of them in schools and other public spaces. The first part of my dissertation builds a typology and original cross-national dataset of the different approaches to engaging with violent national histories, and theorizes about what makes some countries more likely to engage with their difficult histories than others. The second part turns to empirically examining the consequences of teaching vs. suppressing difficult pasts. I draw evidence primarily from Nigeria, which has rarely taught youth any of its history in the 55 years since the end of its Biafran Civil War. I first conducted an inter-generational survey of 2,590 current secondary school students and their parents to determine whether and what narratives about the Biafran Civil War have spread through families and communities in the absence of formal history education. I then ran a field experiment with 3,652 students across 18 secondary schools to see whether teaching youth a fuller story of what happened in the war would reduce lingering inter-ethnic tensions and prejudices. 

I find that, despite peacebuilders’ hopes, constructive engagement with violent history is more likely the endpoint – rather than a driver – of broader reconciliation processes. I show countries’ willingness and ability to productively teach their violent pasts depend on whether victims’ grievances have been resolved and perpetrators held accountable. In contexts without these steps, international organization and civil society-driven efforts to teach history are likely to raise the salience of divisions, rather than resolve them. Yet at the same time, I show attempts to “forget” the past rarely succeed, instead allowing poorly informed, yet polarizing historical narratives to spread within families and communities. Thus, at best, a partial reconciliation – characterized by stability, but latent tension – may be possible in countries unable or unwilling to confront their past.

Education about historical atrocities is typically seen as a way to teach youth to reject present-day violence and intolerance. But in polarized post-war settings, discussing difficult histories could increase divisions as easily as reduce them. When, if ever, do schoolchildren “learn from the mistakes of the past”? I present evidence from a field experiment with 3,652 students across 18 secondary schools in Nigeria, randomizing exposure to classes on either Nigeria’s Civil War or the Rwandan Genocide. My results suggest the effects of history education depend on whether individuals have reasons to remain defensive about their groups' past actions. I find modest increases in intergroup tolerance, empathy, and rejection of violence – but mostly among students from the group least involved in Nigeria's civil war. Students whose ethnic groups perpetrated or were victims of atrocities, in contrast, react with outgroup blame, not empathy, and become more likely to perceive ethnic groups as having fundamental differences. Surprisingly, students also apply these biases and tendencies such as victim-blaming to discussions of international history. My findings question the exportability of the ``Holocaust education" model of peacebuilding to settings where grievances remain unresolved. 

Many post-conflict governments attempt to erase their violent pasts, omitting all or large parts of their history from school curricula. While some hope this policy will help society forget the past and move on, it may simply allow local, polarized versions of history to flourish instead, fueling divisions. When governments pursue policies of collective silence, what and where do younger generations learn about their nation’s violent past? Do families and communities pass down (divisive) historical memories to youth, or do they allow them to fade away? I present evidence from Nigeria, where history has rarely been discussed or taught in the over 50 years since the devastating Biafran Civil War. Surveying 2590 adolescents and their parents across 1295 households, I find that without formal history education, most youth learn surprisingly few facts about past conflicts from their parents or other sources. However, they do inherit more vague overall sentiments, such as that certain outgroups are historical enemies. These sentiments remain stronger among the group that lost the war than those that won it, and being primed to recall them heightens current prejudices and support for modern secessionist movements. My results suggest the passage of time and inter-ethnic contact after conflicts may not be enough for societies to let go of resentments, and that feelings, not factual historical knowledge, are what drive violence’s long-term attitudinal legacies.

While some studies have found citizens' perceptions of election integrity are determined by partisan or other biases, others have found efforts to improve the competence and impartiality of electoral institutions can overcome those biases and improve public confidence in elections. However, few studies have examined this relationship in developing democracies, or considered the impact of the most micro-level institutions, such as the identity of the poll workers voters encounter. We explore the effects of a unique election reform in Nigeria: the deployment of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members as poll workers. The NYSC – a nation- and tolerance-building project that mandates all recent college graduates spend one year serving outside their ethnic home region – markets its workers as unbiased, educated youth who are committed to national unity. Using novel vignette and conjoint experiments fielded in Lagos after the contested 2023 elections, we examine whether and how the status of poll workers as NYSC members influences Nigerians’ trust in elections. We find that voters believe in and support the NYSC, but that this patriotic symbolism and rhetoric is not enough to overcome their underlying mistrust of non-coethnics and non-locals. Voters, ultimately, dislike "outsider" NYSC poll workers and see their presence as increasing the chance of election violence. These results imply that nationalistic symbols such as national service programs are not enough to bolster confidence and unity around election time, and that intergroup contact is more likely to be negative than positive during elections. 

University students have often played a critical role in shaping political dynamics across sub-Saharan Africa. This article situates the expressed political attitudes of students at the University of Nairobi (UoN) within the context of current Kenyan politics. Given the high saliency of ethnicity in the latter, we are particularly interested in how university students define themselves, how they view and engage with the politicization of ethnicity, and how they view members of other communities. Using original survey data from the UoN collected in 2018, this article fills a gap in the existing literature on Kenyan politics, which seldom concentrates on youth or students. Our findings demonstrate that although Kenyan university students aspire to move beyond ethnic politics, ethnicity often shapes their view of their fellow citizens and government action. Overall, we do not find strong evidence that university students will alter the underlying dynamics of Kenyan politics.