Dr. Rebecca Tapscott

Biography

Rebecca Tapscott is a political scientist whose work studies authoritarian power and its contested nature. Her main research interests include how the state produces political power, the relationship between gender, citizenship, and state authority, and the ethical processes through which political determinations are made. She has focused largely on Uganda while maintaining a broader interest in processes unfolding in the so-called 'global South.' Rebecca is the author of "Arbitrary States: Social Control in Modern Authoritarianism in Museveni's Uganda" published by Oxford University Press in 2021. Prior to joining the University of Glasgow in 2024, she held a post-doc position as an Ambizione Research Fellow at the Geneva Graduate Institute’s Albert Hirschman Centre for Democracy from 2017 to 2023 and worked as a Lecturer at York in 2023-2024. Rebecca has also held Visiting Fellowships at the London School of Economics and the University of Edinburgh’s Politics and International Relations Department. She obtained her PhD from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and has received several awards for her innovative research, including the Alfred Rubin Prize in International Law from the Fletcher School in 2011 and the Carl Beck Award from the International Studies Association in 2017. Rebecca is also a member of the UK Young Academy from 2024 to 2029, serves as the Reviews Editor for the journal Civil Wars, is an Associate Editor for Research Ethics, and is on the Board of the International Studies Review. Additionally, she is interested in supervising PhD students working in the fields of authoritarianism, political violence, gender, and research ethics, particularly from critical perspectives.

Research Interests

Experience

Awards