Laura is a US political scientist and legal studies scholar specialised in feminist international relations, war ethics and international law, vice-president elect of the International Studies Association, co-editor of the leading international journal Foreign Policy Analysis. Currently Associate Professor at the University of Florida (USA), she studied at the University of Chicago, Boston College and the School of International Relations of University of Southern California, from which she holds her doctoral degree. She held several teaching and research positions at US universities, including Harvard University (Kennedy School of Government), University of Michigan and Virginia Tech. She serves as a media and research consultant to various organizations, including the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the US Department of State, the Academic Council of the United Nations, and the Canadian Peacebuilding Network. She is the author of almost a dozen of authored, co-authored and edited volumes, including Gendering Global Conflict: Towards a Feminist Theory of War (Columbia University Press 2013), Gender and International Security: Feminist Perspectives (Routledge 2010), Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women's Violence in Global Politics (with Caron Gentry, 2007), Women, Gender, and Terrorism (with Caron Gentry, 2011), Rethinking 21st Century Security: ‘New’ Problems, ‘Old’ Solutions (2009, translated into Arabic and published in 2012 by the National Center for Translation in Egypt).