Joséphine Lechartre
Fields of Study: Comparative Politics, American Politics
Areas of interest: Political violence, political behavior, war legacies, peacebuilding.
Joséphine Lechartre is a PhD Candidate in Political Science and Peace Studies studying political behavior, political violence, peacebuilding, and race and ethnicity. Her research explores the nexus between past and present forms of violence by looking at how past conflict actors continue to act as peace spoilers in the present, and how past experiences of victimization impact the capacity of civilian populations to mobilize for justice and political inclusion after conflict.
Lechartre’s dissertation, “Cultures in Conflict: Civilian Survival Choices and the Reinvention of Political Culture Amidst Genocide,” explains why individuals and communities sometimes become political activists as a result of victimization in civil wars, and why they are silenced and withdraw from politics in other cases. Using participant observation, interviews, archival work, and a community survey, she finds that the strategies civilians adopt to navigate war determine whether they acquire radical, pro-democracy political attitudes that continue to drive political engagement in the post-conflict period.
Lechartre is affiliated with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Klau Center for Human Rights, and the Kroc Institute for Peace Studies. She is the recipient of a Notebaert Fellowship 2018-2023, and of a John Darby Fellowship 2018-2019. In Spring 2023, Lechartre was a predoctoral fellow at the Center for International Studies at the Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada. Her research has been published at the Journal of Peace Research and in policy-oriented outlets such as The InterAmerican Dialogue.
Publications
"Peace Scholarship and the Local Turn: Hierarchies in the Production of Knowledge about Peace," (2022). Journal of Peace Research. (with Anna Johnson, Sehrazat Mart, Mark Robison and Caroline Hughes)
"Who Has the Edge in Guatemala’s Presidential Race?", Featured Q&A, Latin America Advisor, The Dialogue, 11 April 2023, find commentary here
‘La Juridiction Spéciale pour la Paix colombienne: juge impartial ou institution politisée?’, Délibérée 9(1) – (The Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia : impartial judge or politicized institution ?). Available in French here
La participación de las víctimas en el Sistema integral de verdad, justicia, reparación y no repetición (2017) (book with Consuelo Linares and Juan Carlos Ospina, Comisión Colombiana de Juristas). Available in Spanish here