School of Social and Political Science

Background

Dr. Rebecca Tapscott is a visiting fellow at the University of Edinburgh's Politics and International Relations Department. She is also an Ambizione Fellow and lecturer at the Graduate Institute in Geneva (IHEID), as well as a Visiting Fellow at the Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa at the London School of Economics. Her research interests include authoritarianism; international development; political violence and local security; gender; and research ethics governance, with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. She is the author of "Arbitrary States: Social control and modern authoritarianism in Museveni's Uganda" (Oxford University Press, 2021). Rebecca holds a PhD from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. She is the recipient of the Alfred Rubin Prize from the Fletcher School and the International Studies Association’s Carl Beck award. 

See CV here.

Publications

Book

Tapscott, Rebecca. "Arbitrary States: Social Control and Modern Authoritarianism in Museveni's Uganda" Oxford University Press (2021).

• Interview on the book in English and French
• Podcast with Anastasia Shesterinina on empathy and fear in field research
• Cartoon of key findings, drawn by Victor Ndula

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• Tapscott, Rebecca. "Vigilantes and the State: Understanding Violence through a Security Assemblages Approach." Perspectives on Politics (2021), 1-16.
• Tapscott, Rebecca. "Militarized masculinity and the paradox of restraint: mechanisms of social control under modern authoritarianism," International Affairs 96:6 (2020), 1565-1584.
• Abonga, Francis, Raphael Kerali, Holly Porter and Rebecca Tapscott. "Naked bodies and collective action: repertoires of protest in Uganda’s militarised, authoritarian regime." Civil Wars 22:2-3 (2020), 198-223.
• Tapscott, Rebecca. "Conceptualizing Militias in Africa." In The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford University Press (2019).
• Tapscott, Rebecca. “Policing men: Militarized masculinity, youth livelihoods, and security in conflict-affected northern Uganda” Disasters 42:S1 (2018), S119-S139.
• Tapscott, Rebecca. “The government has long hands: Institutionalized arbitrariness and local security initiatives in northern Uganda” Development and Change 48:2 (2017), 263–285.
• Tapscott, Rebecca. “Local security and the (un)making of public authority in Gulu, northern Uganda” African Affairs 116:462 (2017), 39-59.
• Tapscott, Rebecca. “Where the wild things are not: Crime preventers and the 2016 Ugandan elections” Journal of Eastern African Studies 10:4 (2016), 693-712.