Political Science

Ciara Sterbenz is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Brown teaching quantitative methods in both the graduate and undergraduate programs. Her research examines how historical rivalry which encompasses not only geopolitical competition, but also deeply rooted sociocultural antagonism affects relations between states. In these contexts, national identity narratives directly incorporate a long-running history of interstate competition, framing popular understandings of “who we are” through accounts of “how we suffered” and “who we fought.” Drawing on observational evidence as well as original survey work from East Asia, her current book project demonstrates that a distinct set of disputes rooted in this history of rivalry activate perceptions of threat and rile strong anti-foreign nationalism well before tensions become militarized.