I am a PhD candidate in Political Science at The Ohio State University, specializing in International Relations and Comparative Politics. My research centers around identity loss. It introduces a “top-down” approach to the study of identity threats and investigates how the international environment shapes what types of collective identity humans value and how they go about preserving it. It combines structural theory rooted in socio-psychological micro-level mechanisms, with discourse analysis, process-tracing, and archival research.  

My dissertation examines the logic and ramifications of what I call "erasure," the removal of traces of peoples from territories. I argue that the modern international system creates pressures to erase non-core identity groups in states, and that once erasure starts, it recurs and ripples out to other groups, places, and times, through non-linear effects. 

Before joining OSU, I earned a BA at Sciences Po Paris after a year-exchange at the University of Oxford, and a Master in International Relations at the Graduate Institute of Geneva. I've interned and worked at the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva, the International Crisis Group in Brussels, and the National Museum on the History of Immigration in Paris. I was born and raised in France, but my Armenian and Lebanese heritage has largely influenced my research.