My research focuses broadly on the relationship between international organizations and domestic security, order, and human rights outcomes, focusing particularly on peace operations, the politics of the United Nations Security Council and international involvement in peace processes.

Book:

Incredible Commitments:

How UN Peacekeeping Failures Shape Peace Processes

(Cambridge University Press, 2021)

Why do warring parties turn to United Nations peacekeeping and peacemaking even when they think it will fail? I ask why UN peacekeeping survived its early catastrophes in Somalia, Rwanda, and the Balkans, and how this survival should make us reconsider how peacekeeping works. She makes two key arguments: first, I argue the UN's central role in peacemaking and peacekeeping worldwide means UN interventions have structural consequences – what the UN does in one conflict can shift the strategies, outcomes, and options available to negotiating parties in other conflicts. Second, drawing on interviews, archival research, and process-traced peace negotiations in Rwanda and Guatemala, I argue warring parties turn to the UN even when they have little faith in peacekeepers' ability to uphold peace agreements – and even little actual interest in peace – because its involvement in negotiation processes provides vital, unique tactical, symbolic, and post-conflict reconstruction benefits only the UN can offer.

Endorsements: “'Peace negotiations do not happen in a vacuum. Instead, elite combatants constantly adjust their strategies based on what they see the United Nations doing elsewhere. Dayal's analysis of peace processes is as novel and original as it is rigorous and convincing, and it carries crucial policy implications for today's peacekeeping missions.' Séverine Autesserre, author of Peaceland and The Frontlines of Peace

You can read reviews of Incredible Commitments in The Review of International Organizations and International Peacekeeping.

Available for order:

The rest of my publications are listed below. Please contact me for abstracts, copies of articles, more details, or information about my ongoing research.

Academic Publications

“Out from the Wreck: International Relations and Pedagogies of Care,” in Pandemic Pedagogy: Teaching International Relations Amid COVID-19 (Andrew A. Szarejko, ed). London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

“Women’s Participation in Informal Peace Processes,” with Agathe Christien. Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations 26 (2020) 69–98.

“Teaching Counterfactuals from Hell,” with Paul Musgrave. Peace Review, Special Issue 30(1): “Teaching Peace and War,” Spring 2018.

"The Use of Force in UN Peacekeeping," with Lise Morjé Howard, “The Use of Force in UN Peacekeeping,” with Lise Morjé Howard. International Organization, Vol. 72, No. 1 (Winter 2018), pp. 71-103. Supplemental appendices are available here.

“Peace Operations” with Lise Morjé Howard, for the Oxford Handbook of International Organizations (Jacob Cogan, Ian Hurd, and Ian Johnstone, eds). Ch. 9 (pp.191-210). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Selected commentary, policy analyses,

and reports

“How the U.N. Secretary-General Gets Around Security Council Gridlock,” United States Institute of Peace, 12 July 2023.

“Security Council Gridlock Isn’t the End of the Diplomacy — It’s the Start,” United States Institute of Peace, 6 July 2023.

“United States” in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Roundtable on UN Security Council Reform: What the World Thinks, 28 June 2023.

“The U.N. Security Council Was Designed for Deadlock — Can it Change?” with Caroline Dunton, United States Institute of Peace, 1 March 2023.

“A Crisis of Consent in UN Peace Operations,” Global Observatory/International Peace Institute, 2 August 2022.

“Russia’s Invasion Has Created Victims the World Recognizes,” with Kate Cronin-Furman, Foreign Policy, April 2022 .

A Piece of Advice, Oxford University podcast with Andrea Ruggieri, April 2022.

“Russia believes tanks trump international law. Smaller countries like Kenya are using the U.N. to push back,” The Monkey Cage/The Washington Post, 26 February 2022.
“Incredible Commitments: How UN Peacekeeping Failures Shape Peace Processes,” New Books Network interview with Lamis Abdelaaty, February 2022.

“Warnings of ‘Civil War’ Risk Harming Efforts Against Political Violence,” with Alexandra Stark and Megan Stewart, War on the Rocks, January 2022

“How UN Peacekeeping Failures Shape Peace Processes,” interview with Jenna Russo, International Horizons podcast, Ralph Bunche Institute, Graduate Center, CUNY, November 2021.

“New insights into UN Peacekeeping and Peacemaking: Q&A with Anjali Dayal,” interview with Daniel Forti and Priya Swyden, Global Observatory, October 2021.

“Doves Among Hawks: Returning Peacekeeping to Its Diplomatic Roots,” and “Doves Among Hawks: Looking to the Future of UN Peacekeeping,” Inkstick Media, August 2021.

“Reframing Women’s Roles in Peace Processes: Beyond the Negotiating Table,” with Agathe Christien, Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security Policy Brief, February 2020.

“Yogi Bear’s Oddly Familiar Struggle for U.N. Recognition,” Foreign Policy, 25 December 2019.

“Deterrence, Mass Atrocity, and Samantha Power’s The Education of an Idealist,” Medium, 19 November 2019.

Essay for Teaching Roundtable 11-6 on The Clash of Civilizations in the IR Classroom for H-Diplo, 6 November 2019.

“Women are the Key to Peace,” with Melanne Verveer, Foreign Policy, 8 November 2018.

“Reducing Sexual Abuse and Exploitation in UN Peacekeeping Missions: Reforming Data Collection to Inform Action,” with Sophie Huvé, Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security Policy Brief, November 2018.

“Beyond Do Something: Revisiting the International Community’s Role in the Rwandan Genocide,” War on the Rocks, October 2018.

“Connecting Informal and Formal Peace Talks: From Movements to Mediators,” Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security Policy Brief, October 2018.

“Is the UN Security Council Losing Legitimacy?” Political Violence at a Glance, 7 June 2018.

“Keeping the Peace,” Fordham University Faculty Video Lecture Series, April 2018.

"We Must Reckon with the Terrible Realities Hidden in Plain Sight," On Being, 2 April 2018.

“In the UN Security Council, Agreement, Not Discord, is the Norm. But Has it Worked for Peacekeeping?” with Lise Morjé Howard. Political Violence at a Glance, 23 February 2018.

“Writing Women Back In,” with Madison V. Schramm and Alexandra M. Stark, Duck of Minerva, 31 May 2017.

“Indomitability in a Dark Time: An Open Letter to Women Graduating in the Age of Trump,” Ms. Magazine Blog, 18 May 2017.

“Nikki Haley’s New Role at the United Nations.” Political Violence at a Glance, 9 February 2017.

“Is UN Peacekeeping Under Fire? Here’s What You Need to Know.” The Monkey Cage, 1 February 2017.

“Power Politics Meets Personal Persuasion: The Role of the Next UN Secretary General,” with Devin Finn. Political Violence at a Glance, 20 September 2016.

“Strategies and Tools for Preventing Mass Atrocities: Insights from Historical Cases” (Prepared for the Political Instability Task Force with Andrew Bennett, David Kanin, and Lawrence Woocher, August 2012/February 2013)

Progress of the World’s Women 2008/2009: Who Answers to Women—Gender and Accountability (United Nations Development Fund for Women: New York, 2008). Lead Research and Writing Team with Anne Marie Goetz, Hanny Cueva-Beteta, Raluca Eddon, Joanne Sandler, Moez Doraid, Samina Anwar, and Malika Bhandarkar.