Rebecca Tapscott is a political scientist whose work studies how authoritarian power is produced and contested. Her main research interests include how the state produces and projects political power; the relationship between gender, citizenship, and state authority; and how these processes can be studied ethically—as well as the politics of how these determinations is made. Her work has focused largely on Uganda, with a broader interest how these processes unfold in the so-called “global South”. Rebecca is the author of "Arbitrary States: Social control and modern authoritarianism in Museveni's Uganda" (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Before joining Glasgow in 2024, Rebecca held a post-doc and then an Ambizione Research Fellowship at the Geneva Graduate Institute’s Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy (2017-2023), and then a Lecturer at York from 2023-24. Rebecca has also held Visiting Fellowships at the London School of Economics, Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa and at the University of Edinburgh’s Politics and International Relations Department. She holds a PhD from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. She is a recipient of the Fletcher School’s Alfred Rubin Prize in International Law (2011) and the International Studies Association’s Carl Beck award for innovative research on emergent international concerns (2017).

Rebecca is a member of the UK Young Academy (2024-2029). She is also the Reviews Editor at Civil Wars, an Associate Editor at Research Ethics, and a Board Member of the International Studies Review. 

Rebecca is interested in supervising PhD studies working on authoritarianism, political violence, gender, and research ethics, especially from a critical perspective.

• Authoritarianism
• Political violence
• Policing and vigilantism
• Gender, especially masculinities
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Research ethics and its regulation

Research groups

• International Relations

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Prior publications