Dr Roxani Krystalli

Dr Roxani Krystalli

Senior Lecturer

Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 1935
Email
rk70@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Biography

Dr Roxani Krystalli is a Senior Lecturer at the University of St Andrews. The key question animating her work is what sustains life in the face of loss. Her research, teaching, and writing are orientated at the subject of attention, the social science of flourishing, our relationship to place, the ethics and methods of telling stories about suffering, and how beauty and joy can help us live with what hurts.

Roxani is the co-Principal Investigator of an international research project on the role of love and care in helping people imagine how to live with loss. Among other questions, the project asks: How might we understand what people lost during war differently if we ask them about what they loved? What does it mean to love a place and what duties flow from that love? How can practices of attention transform into acts of care? Roxani co-leads the project with Dr Philipp Schulz and the work unfolds in collaboration with a team of researchers in Colombia, Germany, Scotland, and Uganda. It is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the German Research Foundation.

Roxani's first book, Good Victims: The Political as a Feminist Question , was published by Oxford University Press in 2024. Drawing from her in-depth engagement with the peace and justice process in Colombia, Roxani argues that the status of 'victim' can create political possibilities, rather than elide them. Good Victims won the Lee Ann Fujii prize for innovation in the study of political violence, awarded by the American Political Science Association.

In 2023, the British International Studies Association awarded Roxani the Early Career Excellence in Teaching International Studies Prize. She enjoys teaching classes on the politics of nature and place, qualitative research methods, and love and loss. 

Roxani's research has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Scotland's Future Series, the United States Institute of Peace, the National Science Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council, among others. She co-edits the Routledge Studies in Gender and Global Politics book series. 

Roxani holds a PhD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a BA from Harvard University.

Research areas

Dr Krystalli's research, teaching, and supervision interests include: 

  • love and loss
  • the politics of nature and place
  • ethics and methods of researching political violence
  • narrative and storytelling in the study of politics
  • care, beauty, and joy in the shadow of war and peace

PhD supervision

  • Kendra Löwer
  • Claire Wilson

Selected publications

 

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