Development, Peace, and Security
The Development, Peace, and Security Hub examines questions of violence in its multiple dimensions, supporting research on human security and sovereignty. Focusing primarily on the Global South, the hub approaches violence prevention as a multiscalar problem of development, tracing how factors such as popular participation, the capacity and sovereignty of states, and regional and global power configurations shape its conditions and possibilities. It proceeds from the understanding that politically meaningful and theoretically innovative scholarship centers the voices, experiences, and analytical frameworks of those most affected by the issues under study. Such scholarship can draw on multiple disciplinary and methodological traditions, from quantitative, qualitative, and historical analysis to creative, interpretive, critical, and community-based methodologies.
Current Research: The Strategic Autonomy Project
The Hub’s most recent and ongoing project investigates the extent of Latin America’s strategic autonomy in the shifting world order. In a region long marked by direct and indirect Western infiltration through colonialism and imperialism, most recently under the auspices of the War on Drugs, strategic autonomy is part of the policy space states need to secure improved living conditions for their people. The project takes a mixed methods approach to assess three dimensions of strategic autonomy: political (strategy), operational (capabilities) and material (equipment). As part of this project, the Hub seeks to develop open and reproducible research infrastructure—including harmonized datasets, methodological tools, visualization platforms, and comparative indicators—that support scholarship on strategic autonomy, state capacity, and security governance in Latin America and beyond.
In the long term, the project aims to produce a Global Strategic Autonomy Index.
Undergraduate and Graduate Student Research Opportunities
The Hub provides opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to participate in its research projects and to develop their own independent research in a structured and supportive environment. Students from all disciplines can collaborate through literature reviews, data collection, database development, visualization, policy analysis, and co-authored publications.
The Strategic Autonomy Project will be supported by a student research lab. Expressions of interest are welcome.
Potential graduate applicants to Virginia Tech looking for doctoral opportunities are encouraged to contact the hub leader.
Past Research
Past projects have focused on Latin America and have examined, among others, the role of community building and arts in violence prevention in Brazilian favelas; peasant peacebuilding strategies in Colombia; Indigenous and Black struggles for self-determination and against state violence across the Americas; and the militarization of Rio de Janeiro’s police.
Hub Leader Dr. Desirée Poets, Associate Professor of Political Science (dpoets@vt.edu)
Senior Researchers
Dr. Andrea Dávila Saad, PhD in Planning, Governance and Globalization, Virginia Tech (andreadavila18@vt.edu)
Affiliated Researcher
Dr. Luther McPherson, PhD in the Alliance of Social, Political, Ethical and Cultural Thought (ASPECT), Virginia Tech (lmcpherson@vt.edu)
Student Researchers
Marissa Conley, Major in International Relations, Department of Political Science
Logan Klain, M.A. in Political Science
Peacebuilding and Rural Resistance in Colombia
Dávila Saad, Andrea. Collective Action and Civilian Agency in Conflict: Peasant Strategies for Peacebuilding in Rural Colombia. PhD diss., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2025.
Community Communication, Collective Agency, and Violence Prevention
Stephenson, Max, Neda Moayerian, Desirée Poets, Vanessa Guerra, and Henrique Gomes. “Countering Persistent Alterity: Fostering Advocacy and Agency.” Journal of Human Rights Practice 17, no. 3 (2025): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huaf024.
Guerra, Vanessa, Molly Todd, Desirée Poets, and Max Stephenson Jr. “The Contributions of Community-Led Newspapers to the Resilience of Rio’s Maré and Rocinha Favelas during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Journal of Urban Affairs (2024): online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2024.2357707.
Poets, Desirée, Catherine Grimes, Max Stephenson Jr., Neda Moayerian, and Molly Todd. “Care-Based Community Communication, Capacity, and Agency during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Complexo da Maré Favela, Brazil.” World Development Perspectives 30 (2023): 100508. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wdp.2023.100508.
Community Arts, Culture, and Violence Prevention
Barnes, Nicholas, Desirée Poets, and Max Stephenson Jr., eds. Maré from the Inside: Art, Culture, and Politics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech Publishing, 2021.
Moayerian, Neda, Desirée Poets, Max Stephenson Jr., and Catherine Grimes. “The Arts and Individual and Collective Agency: A Brazilian Favela Case Study.” Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies 10, no. 4 (2023): 58–80. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejecs/1407.
Poets, Desirée. “Curating Against Militarization: The Politics of Life in Rio de Janeiro’s Museu da Maré.” Critical Military Studies 6, nos. 3–4 (2020): 397–413. https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2020.1771940.
Indigenous, Black, and Workers’ Sovereignty in the Americas
Poets, Desirée. Unsettling Brazil: Urban Indigenous and Black Peoples’ Resistances to Dependent Settler Capitalism. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2024.
Poets, Desirée. “Citizenship and Settler Colonialism in Brazil: The Toré Ritual as a Decolonial Indigenous Practice in the Northeast Region.” Citizenship Studies 28, no. 3 (2024): 282–300. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2021.1984504.
Poets, Desirée. “The Securitization of Citizenship in a ‘Segregated City’: A Reflection on Rio’s Pacifying Police Units.” URBE: Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana 7, no. 2 (2015): 182–94. https://doi.org/10.1590/2175-3369.007.002.SE03.
Poets, Desirée. “Pacification as a Key Problem of Politics in International Political Thought.” Global Policy 14 (2023): 761–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13237.