Oliver Kaplan

I study and teach on human rights and civilian protection issues, with a focus on civilian agency and how communities organize to protect themselves from wartime violence using nonviolent strategies.

Oliver Kaplan is an Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He is the author of the book, “Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves” (Cambridge University Press, 2017), which examines how civilian communities organize to protect themselves from wartime violence. He was a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and previously a postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University in the Woodrow Wilson School and at Stanford University. As part of his research Kaplan has conducted fieldwork in Colombia and the Philippines. His research has been funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Smith Richardson Foundation and other grants and has been published in The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Stability, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, CNN, and National Interest. Kaplan received his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and completed his B.A. at UC San Diego.