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Leonard and Sophie Davis Genocide Prevention Fellow

June 1, 2016–May 30, 2017 Cyanne E. Loyle, PhD, is an assistant professor of political science at Indiana University. Dr. Loyle’s current research focuses on transitional justice adopted both during and after armed conflict and the strategic use of justice processes in Rwanda and Uganda. She is an East African specialist and has done field work in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as well as Nepal, Northern Ireland, and Turkey. Dr. Loyle received her MA in Holocaust and genocide studies from Stockton University and her MA and PhD in political science from the University of Maryland. In 2014, she was a Fulbright scholar at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) and from 2009–2011 she was a visiting researcher at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Currently, Dr. Loyle is the assistant director of the Northern Ireland Research Initiative and co-creator of the Post-Conflict Justice (PCJ) and During-Conflict Justice (DCJ) databases. Loyle’s work on during-conflict justice has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the US Institute of Peace. Her research has been published with the Social Science Research Council, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Journal of Human Rights, Journal of Peace Research, International Journal of Conflict and Violence, International Interactions, Genocide Studies and Prevention, and Global Public Health.

Fellowship Project

Dr. Cyanne Loyle worked with the Simon-Skjodt Center to develop a research workplan on mass atrocities perpetrated by non-state actors, based in part on the Center’s 2016 Sudikoff Annual Interdisciplinary Seminar on Genocide Prevention and conducted original research on this topic.

Read her research paper, "Understanding Nonstate Actor Behavior: The Determinants of Mass Atrocities."

Visit Dr. Loyle's website to learn more about the data that informed this paper.