Steven Radil

Dr. Radil is an Assistant Professor of Geospatial Science and a political geographer whose research examines the geographical dimensions of political violence. He's currently researching the spatial dynamics of insurgency and civil war and related armed conflicts. He has previously research the militarization of law enforcement in the U.S. and the issues involved in using geospatial technologies to explore political topics. Dr. Radil has regional expertise in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia and has published on a diverse set of political issues in those and other settings. He has written about topics including terrorism, interstate war, civil war, urban violence, participatory governance, and policing. He also has methodological expertise in spatial analysis, social network analysis, and Geographic Information Science and routinely use these tools in his work.

Geographical research often cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries and Dr. Radil frequently collaborates with a diverse set of scholars in geography, political science, criminology, sociology, and urban studies. His research has been published in Progress in Human Geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, The Professional Geographer, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Space and Polity, and Territory, Politics, Governance among others. Dr. Radil has also co-authored a series of major reports on political violence in West Africa, including the recently published Borders and Conflicts in North and West Africa (OECD, 2022).

At USAFA, Dr. Radil teaches courses in human geography, including an upper-division courses in Military Geography (Geo 370) and Geography of International Conflicts (Geo 375) and an introductory course in Human Geography (Geo 250). He has previously taught courses in political geography, geopolitics, and urban geography as well as methods-focused courses in GIS, spatial analysis, and geovisualization.