Patrick McQuestion

Biography

Patrick McQuestion is a doctoral candidate in Peace Studies and Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, affiliated with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. His research focuses on conflict legacies, extractive industry governance, and peacebuilding in Latin America. His dissertation examines how armed conflict shapes extractive governance in resource-rich environments, comparing Colombia and Peru. Using comparative historical analysis and original interview and archival data, it explores how negotiated political settlements—including formal peace agreements such as Colombia’s 2016 accord with the FARC-EP—shape whether ethnic and campesino communities gain institutionalized accountability roles, or whether governance favors capital concentration over community input.

His published work includes co-authored contributions to the Journal of World Affairs and the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies, a book review in the Journal of Latin American Studies, policy reports for the Kroc Institute, PRIO, and UN Women, and a chapter in a forthcoming edited volume on environmental politics in the Peruvian Amazon.

Patrick is a Presidential Fellow in Humanities and Social Sciences (2025–2027) and has held fellowships from the Kellogg, Kroc, and Lucy Institutes. He has also served as department representative in Graduate Student Government (2024-2026). Prior to doctoral study, he worked with the Kroc Institute’s Peace Accords Matrix and Argentina’s National Ministry of Modernization. He holds an M.A. from Georgetown University and Universidad Nacional de San Martín, and a B.A. from Reed College.

Areas of Interest

Subnational research; political economy of extraction; peace and conflict studies