China Beach, Danang, Viet Nam

Department of Political Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
CB# 3265, Hamilton Hall
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3265

Office: (919) 923-1456, 303 Hamilton Hall
Fax: (919) 962-0432
E-mail: rmwood@email.unc.edu
Web: http://www.unc.edu/~rmwood

View Reed's CV

Fields of Specialization: International Relations, Civil Conflict, Conflict Processes, Political Violence, Human Rights

Reed M. Wood is a graduate student in Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His areas of concentration are international relations and comparative politics. Reed's research centers on the dynamics of civil conflict, political violence, and respect for human rights among both state and non-state actors. His dissertation focuses on the formation of insurgent strategies of violence towards noncombatants during civil wars. It argues that violence is used to compel collaboration and mobilize resources when rebels are unable to successfully compete with the package of incentives and disincentives offered by the government. The severity and scope of violence varies with the capacity of the insurgents to offer a competitive collection of goods and services to potential supports. Insurgent violence is therefore a function of the group's capabilities relative to the government as well as the counterinsurgency strategies adopted by state forces. This project, which is supported in part by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant, uses an original dataset that captures the types, frequency, and scope of violence against non-combatant populations during civil conflicts for the period 1995-2005.

Reed has published in International Studies Quarterly and has articles forthcoming in Journal of Peace Research and Human Rights Quarterly. Reed also co-manages the Political Terror Scale (PTS) along with Dr. Mark Gibney. His teaching interests include political violence, conflict processes, and human rights (broadly defined). Reed has taught introductory courses in international relations at UNC and for the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. Before entering graduate school Reed worked as a middle and high school social studies teacher in North Carolina. He earned his B.A. degree from the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 2001 and his M.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2006.