I’m a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Massachussets, Amherst. I received an MA in Political Science from San Diego State University and a BA in political science from San Francisco State University.

My dissertation examines on how new practices associated with the civilian immunity norm affect warring party behavior and understandings. More specifically, my research focuses on the Protection of Civilian Reports produced by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the Taliban. Recognizing that 1) norms do not exist in a vacuum and exist alongside other complementary and conflicting norms and 2) that meanings of what a norm entails vary across audiences, I argue these reports do two things. First, they are communicators of normative priority – the time and effort, indeed their very production, signals that protecting civilians does matter to the international community. Second, by counting the dead and classifying who are civilians and who are not, these reports also ‘teach’ what the norm entails. Through these reports, then, the civilian immunity norm has two effects. The monitoring of behavior has a regulative effect. The classifying of who is and who is not a civilian has a constitutive effect, affecting the very idea of ‘who counts’ as a civilian according to the Taliban.

To learn more about this project, please email me at apezeshk@polsci.umass.edu or direct message me on Twitter.

You can access and download a copy of my CV here.