Maria’s research is at the intersection of gender studies, international peacebuilding governance, and the role of knowledge production and meaning-making practices in world politics. Theoretically, much of her work investigates concepts and performances of authority, legitimacy, and power through poststructural and postcolonial accounts and feminist and interpretive methodologies.  Empirically, as an IR scholar and an Africanist, she studies the micro-dynamics of war-to-peace transitions in Sub-Saharan Africa with the aim of producing original findings that derive from an in-depth study of this region, but that can at the same time inform broader debates in the discipline. More concretely, she has written extensively on the advocacy around, and implementation of, the United Nations Security Council’s Women, Peace, and Security agenda at global, national, and local levels in post-conflict contexts.  

She has extensive experience doing field research in conflict-affected countries, including field research experience in Burundi, Liberia, DRC, and South Africa. She is interested in the power of inductive research and grounded theory methodologies for bringing to the fore the world vision of the research subjects.