The lab aims to produce empirically robust, mainly qualitative, scholarship that sustains interesting theoretical claims. Research assistants are engaged in projects ranging from comprehensive archival work to large-scale content analysis.

Substantively, we are working on a wide variety of papers at the intersection of the racial and the international. At the broadest level, they fall into two main categories.

The first focuses on race, rights, and great power politics. Studies of great power politics on the one hand and of race and rights on the other rarely intersect. Papers in this category examine ways in which incorporating race and rights can enrich the study of great power politics.

Second, we focus on ways in which racial issues are intertwined with international institutions and laws. We are especially interested in how international institutions shape the meanings of race and racism, and how racial issues shape the origin and functioning of these institutions.