Tanisha Fazal is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her scholarship focuses on the relationship between sovereignty and international law.  Fazal’s current research analyzes the strategic use of international law, particularly the law of armed conflict, as well as the changing benefits of becoming a state.  Additional research focuses on the development of the laws of war, including international humanitarian law and principles such as the Responsibility to Protect.  She is the author of State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation (Princeton University Press, 2007), which won the 2008 Best Book Award of the American Political Science Association’s Conflict Processes Section.  Her work has also appeared in journals such as International Organization and Security Studies.  She has been a fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. In 2002 she was awarded the Helen Dwight Reid Award of the American Political Science Association. Prior to joining the faculty at Notre Dame, she taught classes on civil war, territorial conflict, research design, and the laws of war at Columbia University. She remains an Affiliate of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia SIPA.

Fazal received a Ph.D. from Stanford University.