Cecilia is a Fellow in the Department of International Relations at the Coral Bell School. Her work focuses on civilian protection, mass atrocity prevention, and international human protection norms. She has recently won a three-year Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council to study United Nations human protection practices. Her project, ‘United Nations Peace and Security Reform for Human Protection’, will investigate how reform of the United Nations peace and security architecture is shaping the organisation’s human protection practices in local conflicts. It aims to develop a new framework for studying the international-local interactions that influence global norm-making and implementation, using interdisciplinary methods drawn from sociology, international relations, and international law.

Cecilia has a geographic focus on armed conflict and political violence in South and Southeast Asia and has conducted extensive overseas field research. Her books include Child Security in Asia: The Impact of Armed Conflict in Cambodia and Myanmar (Routledge, 2014) and (edited with Alistair D. B. Cook) Civilian Protection in the Twenty-First Century: Governance and Responsibility in a Fragmented World (Oxford University Press, 2016). Her research has been published in journals such as Security Dialogue, Global Governance, and Global Responsibility to Protect. Prior to completing her PhD, Cecilia worked for NGOs in France, Thailand and Cambodia, and for the Advisory Group in AusAID, Australia.