Eleanor Smith is a PhD candidate in foreign policy and international security in the Department of War Studies. Her research focuses on how states design and implement strategies to prevent mass atrocities.

Her research takes a comparative approach to understanding state behaviour, examining how national atrocity prevention strategies emerge, how they vary across countries, and what factors explain these differences. By identifying patterns in how governments operationalise prevention, her work aims to develop a clearer conceptual and practical framework for integrating atrocity prevention into foreign and security policy.

Eleanor’s research contributes to broader debates on international security, global governance, and the role of the state in managing risks of large-scale violence. She is particularly interested in the relationship between policy design, strategic decision-making, and the effectiveness of prevention efforts.

Her wider research interests include foreign policy strategy, peacekeeping, the Responsibility to Protect, and the governance of conflict and mass violence.

Eleanor holds an MA in Global Governance and Diplomacy from the University of Leeds and a BA (Hons) in War and Security Studies from the University of Hull. Alongside her doctoral research, she works as Fellowship Manager at the Churchill Fellowship.

Research Interests

• Foreign policy and international security
• Foreign policy strategy and decision-making
• Comparative foreign policy analysis
• State approaches to mass violence prevention

While atrocity prevention is widely recognised as a core responsibility of states, there is limited understanding of how it is integrated into foreign and security policy in practice. Existing discussions tend to focus on individual initiatives or legal obligations, rather than analysing atrocity prevention as a strategic component of state behaviour. There is also little comparative work examining how and why national approaches differ. This gap restricts both scholarly insight and the development of effective policy. Eleanor’s research addresses this by analysing how states design and implement atrocity prevention strategies within broader foreign policy frameworks.

Thesis

Title: Is Prevention Possible? A Comparative Study of Atrocity Prevention Strategies

Eleanor’s research aims to use an explanatory mixed methods approach to answer four research questions:

1. In the activities by which states attempt to uphold their responsibilities with respect to atrocity prevention, is it possible to discern sustained patterns that can be described as atrocity prevention strategy?
2. Are there similarities and differences with how states choose to prevent Atrocities?
3. Do these similarities and differences in state approaches allow for characterisation into some form of taxonomy of nation states’ atrocity prevention strategies?
4. Can similarities and differences between nation states’ atrocity prevention strategies be explained in terms of causal or contextual factors?

The ultimate aim of this work is to enable nation states to better fulfil their obligations to prevent atrocities.

Supervisors

• Professor Rachel Kerr
• Dr Maeve Ryan