About

Sabrina Karim is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Her research focuses on conflict and peace processes, particularly state building in the aftermath of civil war. She studies international involvement in security assistance to post-conflict states, gender reforms in peacekeeping and domestic security sectors, and the relationship between gender and violence. She directs the Gender and Security Sector Lab, which hosts post-doctoral fellows, graduate fellows, and undergraduate research assistants engaged in research related to women, gender, peacekeeping, policing, and the military. In 2021, she received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award for her work on the domestic and international politics of global police violence. She is the co-author of 'Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping: Women, Peace, and Security in Post-Conflict Countries,' which won the Conflict Research Studies Best Book Prize in 2017 and the American Political Science Association Conflict Processes Best Book Award in 2018, and is also co-author of 'Positioning Women in Conflict Studies: How Women’s Status Affects Political Violence,' forthcoming in 2024. Her work has been published in prominent journals such as the American Political Science Review, International Organization, and the British Journal of Political Science, among others. Her research has received support from various organizations including the Geneva Centre for Security Governance, the Folke Bernadotte Academy, the International Growth Centre, and the British Research Council. She earned her PhD from Emory University in 2016, received a Fulbright Fellowship, and completed her master’s degree as a Clarendon Scholar at Oxford University. She holds an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Criminology
• Law

Selected publications

• International State Building and Civilian Preferences: Experimental Evidence from Liberia

  International Organization · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract While often described as a unified process imposed by external actors on weak, conflict-ridden countries, international state building increasingly comprises a variety of actors involved in different ways in (re)building a diverse set of institutions. Civilian preferences are often excluded from this fragmented environment. We identify and explicate three dimensions along which postconflict state building meaningfully varies: the actor involved, the type of institution targeted, and the form of involvement. We then examine how variation along each dimension impacts civilians’ state-building preferences with two rounds of original survey experiments fielded in Liberia. We find that Liberians largely prefer state-building processes overseen by a subset of international actors; that they prefer state building focused on security-oriented institutions over non-security-oriented institutions; and that different forms of involvement in the process meaningfully influence their preferences. We also find that these preferences depend on civilians’ characteristics. Ultimately, we provide an initial, conceptual mapping of the diversified landscape of international state building, as well as an empirical “unpacking” of the conditions that may shape civilians’ preferences toward the process.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Integrating Artificial Intelligence into Simulation Design: Rebel Recruitment in Azura’s Civil War

  Journal of Political Science Education · 2025-11-17 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Manosphere and Politics

  Comparative Political Studies · 2025-01-17 · 11 citations

  articleSenior author

  The revived men’s movement, colloquially the “manosphere,” has recently increased in prominence and influence, and has been connected to numerous instances of violence, including mass shootings targeting women. Despite this, political science has paid scant attention to the manosphere, and the tactics these groups use against women, feminism, and gender equality, including violence. This theory-building paper begins to fill this gap by focusing on two goals. First, using an original dataset of manosphere blogs, forums, and websites, we provide a descriptive analysis of the manosphere. Second, we develop an original typology of the manosphere along two dimensions — communitarianism and their interactions with women — which helps us theorize about which manosphere subgroups are more prone to use violence. We also compare cases from each subgroup to show initial proof of concept for our theory. Ultimately, we show how excluding the manosphere from political conversation inhibits a comprehensive understanding of contentious politics.

  PublisherDOI

• Harm to Women and Political Violence

  2024-08-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter 5 explores the connection between harm to women and political violence. The chapter starts out by conceptualizing harm to women and developing a measure for it. The rest of the chapter is focused on theorizing about the connection between harm to women and interstate war, intrastate conflict, repression, and terrorism. The main argument in this chapter is that violence begets violence both at the societal level and the individual level. When states do not value their citizens, or rather when they allow both structural violence and physical violence to occur, their cost to use violence to resolve conflict is lower. At the individual level, when more people witness violence in the home, they are more likely to use violence to resolve group-level disputes. Finally, harm to women creates a shortage of women, which can lead to more violence at the societal level. The chapter finds that harm to women is associated with a higher likelihood of inter- and intrastate conflict.

  PublisherDOI

• Solving the Measurement Invalidity Problem

  2024-08-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter 2 explores the problem of measurement invalidity in depth. The chapter starts out by discussing the usefulness of using quantitative measures. It then moves on to address common measurement problems. It demonstrates how there are numerous measures of gender equality and how this creates problems for interpreting and comparing results from different studies. It highlights other problems such as a lack of agreement among indicators that are supposed to measure the same concept, and problems with aggregate scales and the way they are commonly created. The chapter ends with an explanation of how measurement models can address these problems, their benefits, and how they are used to create the measures of women’s status presented in subsequent chapters.

  PublisherDOI

• Notes

  2024-08-05

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Appendix

  2024-08-05

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• How epidemics affect marginalized communities in war-torn countries: Ebola, securitization, and public opinion about the security forces in Liberia

  World Development · 2024-03-28 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Epidemics that overwhelm health and national institutions tend to disproportionately affect individuals from marginalized communities. The securitization of epidemics further exacerbates feelings of alienation and victimization by security forces among those in such communities. Focusing on this population, our study explores how experiences with securitization during the 2014 Ebola Virus epidemic in Liberia affected perceptions of the security forces. We leverage two, unique surveys conducted before and after the Ebola Virus Disease epidemic in two of Monrovia’s informal communities with histories of internally displaced persons and ex-combatants in Monrovia, Liberia–West Point and Peace Island. Our analysis allows us to assess differences in public opinion before and after the Ebola Virus Disease. We find that perceptions of police discrimination and disrespect increased in both communities and that demand for police services declined in both communities. With respect to the Armed Forces, direct contact with soldiers enhanced feelings of safety, but only among those who did not witness them engaging in abuse. Our findings suggest that securitization of epidemics could exacerbate trust in the state, thereby weakening its legitimacy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Conclusion

  2024-08-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This Conclusion summarizes the book. It begins by revisiting the book’s primary objective— to explore the connections between women’s status and various forms of political violence—and the new methods adopted to explore that objective, in particular the focus on four concepts related to women’s status: women’s inclusion, women’s rights, harm to women, and beliefs about women’s status. The chapter then summarizes the findings from each chapter, regarding those concepts, and contextualizes them within political science as it currently stands. The chapter also addresses the limitations of the book and suggests both future research agendas and policy recommendations. It concludes by bringing gender equality back into the fold.

  PublisherDOI

• Women’s Inclusion and Political Violence

  2024-08-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter 3 explores the connection between women’s (political) inclusion and political violence. The chapter starts out by conceptualizing women’s inclusion and developing a measure for it using the kind of model described in Chapter 2. The rest of the chapter is focused on theorizing about the connection between women’s inclusion and interstate war, intrastate conflict, repression, and terrorism. These arguments can be usefully grouped into two types. The first group of arguments has to do with the idea that women as individuals or as a group tend to behave in certain ways or have particular preferences that differ in systematic ways from men. A second group of arguments focus on the how perceived stereotypes about women who are included in public spaces affects the behavior of political actors. The results show that women’s inclusion in political spaces is negatively correlated with terrorist attacks.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Michael Gilligan

  New York University

  32 shared

• Jenny Guardado

  Georgetown University

  28 shared

• Bernd Beber

  RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research

  28 shared

• Kyle Beardsley

  21 shared

• Robert Blair

  American University

  15 shared

• Benjamin S. Morse

  10 shared

• Daniel W Hill

  10 shared

• Dara Kay Cohen

  Walsh University

  5 shared

Labs

• Gender and Security Sector LabPI

Education

• PhD, Political Science

  Emory University

  2016

Awards & honors

• NSF CAREER Award (2021)
• Conflict Research Studies Best Book Prize for 2017
• American Political Science Association Conflict Processes Be…