Hi! Welcome to my site.

 

I'm Sherry Zaks. I'm a fourth year Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California. Prior to moving to the land of (great) tacos and (highly-variable) photoshoots, I received my Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed post-docs at Dartmouth & Stanford.

 

My book project, Resilience Beyond Rebellion, examines the conditions under which rebel groups are able to transform into political parties in the aftermath of civil wars. I draw on organizational sociology to develop a comprehensive model of militant groups and trace how wartime structures either facilitate or inhibit rebel-to-party transformations. 

 

When I'm not writing, you can usually find me honing my skills as an amateur chef or climbing plastic walls with my partner, Evan, the author of the WWII novel THE VENTRILOQUISTS, as well as various less funny, but equally tragic dad jokes.

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The photos above are illustrations of the organizational structure of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional from the field diary of one of its commanders. They are very cool. If you do not think they are cool, this website might not be for you.