Yasmeen Hanon
PhD Student, Political Science & Scientific Computing, University of Michigan
Hello! I am a joint PhD student of Political Science and Scientific Computing at the University of Michigan.My research focuses on civil war, actor decision making in conflict, and the use of unconventional strategies in war-making. Specifically, I am interested in understanding when and why armed actors deploy costly or seemingly counterintuitive tactics during conflict. I have largely explored these dynamics in the context of attacks on shared natural resources, namely water bodies and infrastructure. I also investigate these questions in cases involving the use of prohibited or restricted weapons of war.Methodologically, I am interested in developing new datasets and novel approaches to data collection, including the use of large language models (LLMs) to identify and classify conflict-related information. My work also draws on formal modeling and agent-based modeling to study strategic decision making in conflict. I further use spatial data analysis, remote sensing, and satellite imagery to examine patterns of political violence and conflict dynamics.I serve as the President of the Graduate Student Association of Political Scientists (GAPS), and am a co-Coordinator of the American Contention Working Group (AMCON). I am also involved in the Conflict, Peace, Research, and Development (CPRD) workshop.
Research
Working Papers
Landscapes of Conflict: Distinguishing Spatial Selection from Post-Onset Land-Cover Change
Do armed conflicts transform the landscapes in which they occur, or are certain land typologies predisposed to hosting conflict? Analyzing land-cover composition inside conflict-exposed areas and adjacent comparison zones, this study separates two commonly conflated processes: spatial selection into specific landscapes and post-onset land-cover change. Using a same-year boundary comparison and fixed-footprint difference-in-differences design, the paper finds that conflict interiors are systematically more agricultural, mixed-use, and urban than nearby areas, suggesting that conflict selects into cultivated and inhabited landscapes. However, post-onset land-cover change is more selective. Rainfed cropland declines after conflict begins, with similar patterns observed in adjacent comparison areas, implying spatially diffuse disruption rather than an interior-specific effect. In contrast, mosaic cropland and natural vegetation classes decline modestly but significantly inside conflict footprints relative to surrounding land cover, with results persisting across alternative comparison geometries. These findings show that armed conflict both selects into landscapes and reshapes them, while emphasizing the analytical distinction between where conflicts occur and how they change the places they affect. The study contributes a scalable remote-sensing framework for analyzing how violence alters land systems across space, time, and land-cover type.
Prohibited Weapons of War (PWOW): An Original Dataset on Prohibited Weapons Use in Armed Conflict
Despite more than a century of international conventions, treaties, and legal agreements intended to restrict the means of warfare, armed actors continue to use weapons prohibited or restricted by international law. Why do actors decide to take such measures despite the legal, reputational, strategic, and long-term costs of doing so? How often are prohibited or restricted weapons used in conflict settings, and under what conditions? This paper introduces Prohibited Weapons of War (PWOW), a novel event-level dataset designed to provide scholars with the systematic evidence needed to answer such questions. Existing weapons datasets largely document illicit and small arms transfers and sales, not their use. PWOW is the first dataset to track cases in which prohibited or restricted weapons are deployed during armed conflict. Using major international conventions regulating chemical, biological, incendiary, fragmentation, laser, mine, and cluster weapons, PWOW's classification system combines API-based article retrieval, screening through local language-models, and human verification to compile a dataset of prohibited or restricted weapons use events. Entries feature information on weapon types used, perpetrators, targets, locations, relevant legal instruments, and source evidence. PWOW provides a foundation for examining the extent to which international law constrains wartime behavior, and for understanding why armed actors adopt strategically costly tactics.
Strategic Destruction and Resource Scarcity: Wartime Attacks on Shared Water Resources
Ostensibly counterintuitive, armed actors frequently destroy shared resources essential to governance and survival. This paper examines said phenomenon in the context of wartime attacks on water resources. As an essential, nonsubstitutable, and slow-to-regenerate good, water is vital to military operations, population survival, and post-conflict governance. These characteristics should discourage destruction, especially as scarcity increases. However, scarcity also intensifies the damage caused by attacks. This transforms water from a protected resource into a strategically valuable target. I argue that wartime attacks on water resources follow a nonlinear threshold logic. Such attacks are least attractive under conditions of abundance, most attractive under intermediate scarcity, and increasingly harmful to perpetrators and targets alike near existential depletion. A sequential differential game formalizes the intertemporal tradeoff between short-term military advantages and long-term resource preservation. An agent-based model (ABM) is then used as a computational complement to examine whether this pattern persists when actors rely on bounded, agent-level decision rules rather than full forward-looking optimization. The ABM addresses data limitations by probing the argument under alternative behavioral assumptions, rather than through direct replication. Supplemented with case evidence, this approach offers a framework for anticipating when armed actors are likely to engage in strategic resource destruction.
In Hot Water: Analyzing the Role of Water Scarcity on Water Casualties in War
This study examines the strategic logic underlying the destruction of water resources during armed conflict under conditions of increasing water scarcity. While international humanitarian law and rational-choice expectations would predict restraint toward essential and non-substitutable resources, empirical patterns demonstrate the opposite: water-casualty events become more frequent and more consequential as water scarcity intensifies. Drawing on a mixed-methods research design, the paper integrates a Most Different Systems Design (MDSD) comparative case analysis with a formal sequential-differential game model to explain this counterintuitive dynamic. I argue that water scarcity transforms water into an increasingly potent weapon, incentivizing strategic degradation short of total depletion, while attribution ambiguity enables actors to evade accountability. Together, these mechanisms address two empirical puzzles: why water is targeted more frequently as it becomes scarcer, and why claims of accidental destruction persist despite repeated attacks. The findings contribute to scholarship on wartime resource destruction by reframing water casualties as strategic, dynamic, and scarcity-dependent phenomena rather than incidental byproducts of violence.
In Progress
Arms Sales, International Conflict, and Public Opinion
As awareness of weapon sales increases among the populations of large exporting states, public support of deals may be influenced by the type of weapons sold, the recipient of said weapons, the economic advantages of their sale, and if applicable, the nature of the ongoing conflict for which said weapons will be utilized.
Presentations
Independently-Authored
In Deep Water: Assessing Water as a Casualty of Conflict in the Syrian Civil War
University of Missouri- Kansas City, Guest Lecture | Kansas City, Missouri December 2025
International Studies Association—Midwest | St. Louis, Missouri November 2025
Conflict and Peace, Research, and Development Workshop | Ann Arbor, Michigan November 2025
No Taxation? No Representation: Low Tax Rates and Political Repression in the Middle East and North Africa
International Studies Association—Midwest | St. Louis, Missouri November 2024
Swimming Upstream: Water Conflicts as Resource War Outliers
Undergraduate Symposium of Research & Creative Scholarship Presentation of Distinction
International Studies Association—Midwest | St. Louis, Missouri November 2024
Symposium of Undergraduate Research | University of Missouri- Kansas City April 2025
Oil and Orientalism: Rethinking the Political Resource Curse in the Middle East and North Africa
The Tyler Center for Global Study Virtual Symposium | Florida State University November 2024
Sigma Tau Delta Interdisciplinary Symposium | University of Missouri- Kansas City April 2024
Symposium of Undergraduate Research | University of Missouri- Kansas City April 2024
The Kinder Institute Student Conference on Democracy Studies | University of Missouri March 2024
International Studies Association—Midwest | St. Louis, Missouri November 2023
International Relations Council | Kansas City, Missouri November 2023
MENA and News Media: A Quantitative Textual Assessment of Bias in Jordanian Arabic-Language Newspapers
The Tyler Center for Global Study Virtual Symposium | Florida State University November 2024
Sigma Tau Delta Interdisciplinary Symposium | University of Missouri- Kansas City April 2024
The Kinder Institute Student Conference on Democracy Studies | University of Missouri March 2024
International Studies Association—Midwest | St. Louis, Missouri November 2023
International Relations Council | Kansas City, Missouri November 2023
Involuntary Non-Neutrality: Analysis of Perception- Impacts in Ostensibly Neutral Conflict News on the Middle East and North Africa
International Studies Association—Midwest Best Undergraduate Paper Award
Sigma Tau Delta Interdisciplinary Symposium | University of Missouri- Kansas City April 2023
Symposium of Undergraduate Research | University of Missouri- Kansas City April 2023
UMKC Departmental Showcase | University of Missouri- Kansas City April 2023
International Studies Association—Midwest | St. Louis, Missouri November 2022
Rising Scholars Conference | University of Maryland, College Park October 2022
MENA And the Resource Curse: Establishing a Correlation Between Civil Conflict and Resource Wealth in The Middle East and North Africa
Sigma Tau Delta Interdisciplinary Symposium | University of Missouri- Kansas City April 2023
UMKC Departmental Showcase | University of Missouri- Kansas City April 2023
International Studies Association—Midwest | St. Louis, Missouri November 2022
Rising Scholars Conference | University of Maryland, College Park October 2022
Collaborative Research
State, Society, and Property Rights in the Development of Critical Materials
International Studies Association—Midwest | St. Louis, Missouri November 2024
Undergraduate Research Day at the Capitol | Jefferson City, Missouri March 2025
Service & Teaching
SERVICE ROLES
Graduate Association of political scientists (gaps) | Co-President
Advocacy for political science graduate student interests
October 2025-Ongoing
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American Contention Working Group | Co-Coordinator
Arrange meetings and project support for students interested in American Contention
February 2026-Ongoing
TEACHING
Grader | AMCULT 384: Islamophobia —Not A Phobia
University of Michigan
February 2026- May 2026
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Course Developer| POLSCI 373: political institutions
University of Missouri - Kansas City
January 2025 - May 2025
Contact
Please feel free to reach out. I prefer to communicate through email, and will respond as soon as possible.