Laurie Georges is a PhD candidate specializing in International Relations and Comparative Politics. Her dissertation examines systemic pressures to erase non-core identity groups in states, and how erasure perpetuates itself in the modern international system. Her broader research interests include ontological security, the construction of ignorance, nationalism and protracted conflict, particularly in the regions of the Middle East and the Caucasus. Prior to joining OSU, Laurie earned her BA at Sciences Po Paris after a year-exchange at the University of Oxford, and a Master in International Relations at the Graduate Institute of Geneva.

Georges' Mershon supported research project is "Erasure and its Reverberations in the Modern International System."

Project abstract:
My project examines the self-reinforcing logic of erasure—the intentional removal of traces of non-core groups from a territory. Based on a novel conceptualization of erasure and unlike most scholarship on ethnic cleansing, or assimilation, I offer an international structural theory of pressures and incentives for states to erase their internal others, and how through “system effects” (feedback, indirect, and interaction effects), heightened threat perceptions, and irreconcilable self narratives, erasure ripples out. I show the theory’s analytical utility through case studies of the Ottoman Empire/Turkey (with reverberations in Nagorno-Karabakh, Iran, Iraq, and Syria), and extensions in Cameroon, Indonesia, and the U.S.

My research advances our understanding of international, national, and human security in three broad ways. It incorporates 35 practices that are currently treated separately— from language bans and historical memory manipulation to forced marriages, forced displacement and genocide—into one overarching framework of erasure. Through this innovative conceptualization, I am able to uncover a common underlying cause and an overall feedback loop of erasure that was missed before. Second, instead of focusing on the local/state level, and on separate, discrete events, I develop a top-down theory of the pressures of the international system and of how erasure ripples out to other groups, in broader geographical areas and across time. Third, the byproduct of erasure, “structured ignorance”—filtered knowledge and biased interpretive grids about the internal other— helps understand why aggressive forms of nationalism—such as nativism or victimhood nationalism—resonate and are hard to unmake.