About

Elisabeth Jean Wood is professor of political science and international and area studies at Yale University and a member of the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute. Her research in comparative politics focuses on sexual violence during war; emergence and resolution of civil wars; collective action and social movements; transitions to democracy; distributive politics, especially agrarian; and the politics of Latin America and Africa.

Wood is currently writing two books, one on sexual violence during war, drawing on field research in several countries, and a second on political violence in Colombia with Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín. She has carried out field research in Colombia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Peru, and Israel/Palestine.

Her many publications include Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador (Cambridge University Press, 2000). She is coeditor with Morten Bergsmo and Alf B. Skre of Understanding and Proving International Sex Crimes (TOAEP, 2012) and with Ian Shapiro, Susan C. Stokes, and Alexander S. Kirshner of Political Representation (Cambridge University Press, 2010).