Background: Before I first came for my graduate studies to Michigan State University in 1998, I had studied history and earned both BA and MA degrees from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. An important part of my studies at both levels had to do with institutional problems confronting the Ethiopian state as it evolves through the 19th and 20th centuries. My BA senior essay surveyed conditions in the Northern Province of Tigray during a particularly turbulent time between 1769 and 1855 when the central state lost much of its control over the regions. My MA thesis chronicled the growth, expansion, and impact of municipal and other institutions in Dire Dawa, one of the more important cities in Ethiopia. The Journal of Northeast African Studies published an offshoot of my research during this period. (Vol. 9: No. 2)

Research Focus: My current research interests focus on the interrelationship between democracy, conflict, and civil society and how this plays out with respect to the recent history of Ethiopia. I am especially interested in examining how the lack of a democratic political tradition has stultified the growth of representative institutions and civil society and how these have hampered the extent to which political problems could be resolved peacefully. I have just come back from seven-month months of fieldwork in Ethiopia gathering data for a comparative dissertation study of representative institutions with particular focus on the Ethiopian Imperial Parliament that existed between 1932 and 1974. I intend to return to Ethiopia and continue my studies for the next several months.