Tara Chandra is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at UC Berkeley. Her research falls primarily at the intersection of gender and international security. Her dissertation project focuses on insurgent violence against women, and examines what strategic dynamics help determine the form that targeting of women by insurgent groups will take. Tara’s work also addresses broader theories of insurgency/counterinsurgency, and the causes and consequences of political violence more generally.

She holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of Chicago, where she graduated with Honors in 2011. Tara also holds an MA in Global Affairs from Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.

Prior to her graduate study at Yale, Tara worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she served as David Rothkopf’s lead researcher on a book on U.S. foreign policy and national security (National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear). A selection of her previous internship experience includes the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, the Brookings Institution, and Capitol Hill.