About

About me: I am currently a program officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where I support the USIP Asia Center’s research and publications portfolio.  My professional and personal interests include the political dynamics of Pakistan and Afghanistan and American engagement with the region; the study of state formation and violent political organizations more generally; elections and electoral systems; climate change and energy conservation; and U.S. politics, among other issues.

I received a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins-SAIS, with a concentration in South Asia and international economics in 2014, and my undergraduate degree in international relations from Boston University in 2005. From 2008-2013 I served in a variety of assistant and analyst positions at the Center for American Progress, all focused on U.S. foreign policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan. I was an election observer in Afghanistan with Democracy International for the 2010 and 2014 elections.

About this blog: By volume, the largest category of material published here are my daily summaries of news events in Afghanistan and Pakistan. You can also read older analysis columns, book reviews, and primary source document reviews from earlier in this blog’s history when I was better about producing more varied content. Writings published externally are or will be listed here.

Twitter is my primary outlet for quick thoughts and public discussions on a range of issues; assuming you didn’t find me through it in the first place, this site will probably work best as an annex to my stream of thoughts there.

Since 2014 I’ve also become a regular user of Goodreads as a means of tracking my book readings and sharing short reviews of what I read, which can be found here.

I have been self-teaching myself the use of R for data analysis and my code repositories (primarily related to the collection and analysis of Pakistan and Afghanistan elections data) are collected on Github here.

Contact info: I always appreciate feedback on this site and my writing, tips towards new documents or readings, and general comments. Please feel free to contact me at ccookman at gmail dot com or on Twitter @colincookman.

General disclaimer: As noted at the bottom of each page, unless otherwise cited all commentary on this site represents my personal views alone, is produced in my own time, and does not necessarily represent the views of any past, present, or future employers.