Monica Duffy Toft

Monica Duffy Toft is professor of international politics and director of the Center for Strategic Studies at The Fletcher School at Tufts University. Toft researches international security, ethnic and religious violence, civil wars, and demography. She has been widely recognized for her scholarship. She served as the World Politics Fellow at Princeton University and was named a Carnegie Scholar for her research on religion and violence, a distinguished scholar of religion by the International Studies Association, and a Fulbright scholar. Toft served as a Russian linguist in the United States Army at the height of the Cold War and received an Army Commendation Medal for her service.

Before joining Fletcher, Toft taught at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government and Harvard University, where she directed the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs and was the assistant director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. She is a research associate with both institutions and is a supernumerary fellow at Brasenose College, University of Oxford. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she served as a global scholar of the Peace Research Institute Oslo and was a member of the Political Instability Task Force.

Toft is frequently published in academic journals and global media outlets on civil wars, territory and nationalism, demography, and religion in global politics.

Her recent books include "Civil Wars" (Oxford UP, 2024), "Dying by the Sword" (Oxford UP), "Securing the Peace" (Princeton UP), "Political Demography" (Oxford UP); and" God's Century" (Norton).