Dr Samuel Ritholtz

Dr Samuel Ritholtz

BSc MSc DPhil
Politics and International Relations
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow since 2025

I am interested in the politics of identity, stigma, and brutality during war and other episodes of violence. My research centres marginalised social groups in both theoretical and empirical studies of contentious politics. My current book project, Waging Stigma during Civil War, investigates collective violence against LGBTIQ+ people during the Colombian civil war and ties these dynamics of violence to wartime social transformation processes. At All Souls, I will begin a new research project, tentatively titled Purity & War, which explores the phenomenon of 'social cleansing' in Latin America through a genealogy of the concept of 'subversion’, and its variations, in the region. I have further research interests in the study of LGBTIQ+ displacement, the semiotics of violence, and aesthetic/artistic practice during contentious politics. In 2026, I will publish, with Rebecca Buxton, The Way Out: Justice in the Queer Search for Refuge (University of California Press), which explores the stakes of LGBTIQ+ inclusion in displacement justice debates and articulates a new relational approach to conceptualizing the drivers of displacement.

Links
Personal Website
Research Areas
Political Violence
Civil War
Displacement
Social Processes of War
Theories of Violence
Refugee Protection

Selected Publications

The Way Out: Justice in the Queer Search for Refuge

University of California Press, 2026 (written with Rebecca Buxton)

Queer Conflict Research: New Approaches to the Study of Political Violence

Bristol University Press, 2024 (edited with Jamie J. Hagen and Andrew Delatolla)

‘Brutality on Display: Media Coverage and the Spectacle of Anti-LGBTQ Violence in the Colombian Civil War'

Third World Quarterly, 2024

‘Sanctuary after Asylum: Addressing a Gap in the Political Theory of Refuge’

American Political Science Review, 117(3), 2023 (with Rebecca Buxton)

‘Is Queer-and-Trans Youth Homelessness a Form of Displacement? A queer epistemological review of refugee studies’ theoretical border,’

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 46(9), 2023

‘The Ontology of Cruelty in Civil War: The Analytical Utility of Characterizing Violence in Conflict Studies,’

Global Studies Quarterly, 2(2), ksac014, 2022

Background
  • Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, All Souls College (from 2025) 
  • Departmental Lecturer in International Relations, University of Oxford (from 2023 to 2025) 
  • Max Weber Fellow, European University Institute (from 2022 to 2024) 
  • DPhil in International Development, University of Oxford (2023) 
  • International Security Fellow, the Hertie School (from 2021 to 2022) 
  • Visiting Doctoral Research Fellow, Universidad de los Andes (2020) 
  • MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, University of Oxford (2018) 
  • BSc in International Agriculture and Rural Development, Cornell University (2014)