JONATHAN LEADER MAYNARD

Jonathan Leader Maynard is a Departmental Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, and a Research Associate at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.

Dr Leader Maynard studies the role of ideology in political violence and armed conflict, especially the large-scale killing of civilians in genocides, war crimes, 'ethnic cleansing' and terrorism. His work aims to produce a general account of how violence against civilians is made to look justified to those who, in various ways, perpetrate it. His approach draws on a range of disciplines including genocide studies, international relations, political theory, political sociology, intellectual history, social psychology and social epistemology.

His past work has been particularly concerned with historical atrocities in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and in the military operations of the Western Allies during World War II, but is now increasingly concerned with more contemporary cases, including the Rwandan genocide, violence in the former Yugoslavia, and mass killings in the Guatemalan Civil War. More generally, he is interested in conflict and atrocity prevention, the study of ideologies, international normative and political theory, and military ethics.