Sally Sharif, PhD
Welcome! I am the Simons Foundation Canada Postdoctoral Fellow at Simon Fraser University and a Lecturer in Political Science at the University of British Columbia. In August 2025, I will join the College of the Holy Cross as an Assistant Professor of comparative politics.
Previously, I was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Notre Dame. I have a PhD in political science from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (2021).
My work lies at the intersection of comparative politics, international relations, and political methodology. I explore the ways that governments, international organizations, and third-party states manage various forms of political violence, ranging from repression, cooption, and containment to peacebuilding and conflict resolution strategies. I lived most of my life under an authoritarian regime and, in my recent work, have explained the complex ways through which repression incites or subdues political violence.
In my published work, I have explained civil war onset and duration, post-conflict consolidation of state power, and the impact of international involvement on civil war recurrence. My work has appeared in International Peacekeeping; Political Violence and Terrorism; Territory, Politics, Governance; Defence and Peace Economics; Studies in Conflict and Terrorism; Human Rights Quarterly; and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Project for Return. My policy analysis has been published by The Conversation, The Washington Post, the Peace Accords Matrix Policy Brief Series, and Political Violence at a Glance. See my Google Scholar page here.
I speak seven languages and have done field research in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Outside academia, I am a triathlete and am deeply concerned by environmental degradation, which is apparent first and foremost in our mountains and lakes.