Graduate Student
she/her
Claire Petertam (she/her) graduated from Wellesley College with B.A. in political science and a minor in history. She also holds an M.A. in political science from the University of California – Berkeley. Claire’s research interests include post-colonial nationalist movements, substate violence and nonstate actors’ strategic use of violent versus nonviolent tactics. At Boston University, she hopes to add a gendered lens to her work, examining the relationship between women insurgents’ roles during times of conflict and their position in society once organizations shift from from violent to nonviolent political organizing.
Claire’s previous academic research has primarily focused on terrorism, sub-state conflict, and peace negotiations, with an emphasis on Northern Ireland. A UK Fulbright Summer Institutes Award recipient, Claire studied at Queen’s University Belfast’s Institute of Irish Studies Summer School, where she first became interested in non-state actors’ transitions from paramilitaries to mainstream political parties. As a fellow with Wellesley’s Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs, she interned with the Belfast Interface Project, a peacebuilding organization in Northern Ireland, and collaborated with the University of Ulster’s Dr. Jonny Byrne to study spatial segregation and economic deprivation in Belfast. Claire was awarded a Jerome A. Schiff Fellowship for independent undergraduate field research, which she used to conduct personal interviews with community organizers and activists in Belfast. Her honors thesis drew on these interviews, in combination with quantitative and geospatial data, to examine the spatial and tactical dimensions of paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland during periods of peace negotiations.
Following UC Berkeley, Claire taught high school history at Pacific Ridge School in Carlsbad, CA. Since returning to the Boston Area, she has worked as a history instructor at Boston University Academy, where she also serves as the Assistant Director of Equity and Inclusion.