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Dissertation

Securing Precarious Worlds: Institutions, Catastrophic Risk, and the Emergent Politics of Survival

Abridged Abstract:

This dissertation examines how cosmological understandings of security appear, or fail to appear, within contemporary struggles over planetary governance. It develops cosmological security as an analytic for identifying how communities sustain threatened worlds amid ecological collapse, nuclear precarity, and geopolitical instability. As dominant frameworks struggle to address these paradigm-rupturing threats, the project maps the alternative approaches leveraged by global actors with the goal of clarifying their practical relevance for security governance.

Using archival research, interviews, and participatory observation, the dissertation follows three cases that reveal how actors frame security, how they justify their claims, and how they engage global institutions. It asks how different world-ordering commitments shape protective action and what these dynamics imply for the design of future governance frameworks. The project aims to support both scholars and practitioners by showing how security might be understood and operationalized through attention to relationships and worlds, and by identifying where a cosmological approach offers insight and where it reaches its limits.

Select Awards

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (September 2023-June 2028)

Award Amount: $147,000

Eugene Cota-Robles Graduate Fellowship (September 2022-June 2028)

Award Amount: $107,256

Kugelman Research Fellowship, Center for Citizen Peacebuilding (June 2025-June 2026)

Award Amount: $1,500

Brython-Davis Fellowship (April-June 2025)

Award Amount: $12,000

Cascading Mentorship Fellowship (April 2025)

Award Amount: $3981.55

Publications

My research sits at the intersection of global security, planetary governance, and the politics of world-making. My earlier work engaged deeply with relational, decolonial, and cosmological approaches to international relations, examining how power and vulnerability are shaped by the meanings communities attach to crisis and survival. These commitments continue to ground my thinking, but my current projects place greater emphasis on institutional processes and policy frameworks, now tracing how organizations confront catastrophic risk, implement security practices, and navigate competing world-ordering commitments. Bringing these strands together allows me to study both how security is imagined and how it is enacted amid planetary challenges.

Publications

Book Chapter: Colello, Gabriella. “Pedagogie-Z: Generating Care in a Traumatized Generation.” In Teaching Political Science and International Relations for Early Career Instructors, edited by Misbah Hyder and Michael Murphy. Palgrave Macmillan (2024).

Article (Contributing Author): Baricuatro, Malia, Annie Fay Camacho, Gabriella Colello, Jonathan U. Guerrero, Johansen Pico, and Tiara R. Na’puti. 2024. “A Canoe Concept Toward Sustained Indigenous Connections.” In Preparing Publicly Engaged Scholars: A Guide for Innovation in Doctoral Education, 60-68. New York: American Council of Learned Societies.

Article (Lead Author): Colello, Gabriella, Swapna Pathak, and Marcos Scauso. 2022. “Solutions for Whom and by Whom? Environmental Norms and Intersectional Decoloniality.” Environmental Philosophy 19 (2): 237–266. https://doi.org/10.5840/envirophil202266118

Forthcoming

Article (Invited Contributor): Behera, Navnita; Colello, Gabriella; Kurki, Milja; Lynch, Cecelia; and Querejazu, Amaya. “Relational Voices in IR: Pluralizing Relationality.” International Studies Review [Presidential Issue], forthcoming 2026.

Article (Solo Author): Colello, Gabriella. Saprobic Politics: Decomposing Colonial Cosmologies in International Relations. Forthcoming with Review of International Studies, 2026.

Book Chapter: Colello, Gabriella. “Introduction.” In Indomitable ‘Others’: Stories of Subaltern and More-than-Human Voices Confronting Liberalisms and Sustaining Worlds, ed. Scauso. Routledge (2026).

Under Review

Article: Colello, Gabriella. “Worlds in Contest: Cosmological Security and Colonial Violence in West Papua.” Revise and resubmit, Security Dialogue.

Works in Progress

Dissertation: Securing Precarious Worlds: Institutions, Catastrophic Risk, and the Emergent Politics of Survival.

Article: "Tides of Justice: Ecocide Law as a Mechanism of Alternative Security." Gabriella Colello and Garrett Fitzgerald

Select Conferences

International Studies Association (Annual Convention)
Chicago, Illinois • 2025

Panelist, Relational Voices in IR: Relationality, Peace, and Conflict
Chair, Relational Voices in IR: Deconstructing Colonial Legacies

International Studies Association–West
Pasadena, California • 2024

Panelist, Security and Peace from Across Perspectives
Chair, Undergraduate Research Panel: Colonial Legacies and Resistance

Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (Annual Convention)
Bodø, Norway • 2024

Roundtable Participant, Oceania Rising: Nuclear Remembrance and Relational Worldings in the Sea of Islands

International Studies Association (Annual Convention)
San Francisco, California • 2024

Panelist, Relational Voices in IR: Pluriversalizing Relationality
Chair, Relational Voices in IR: Decolonization, Resistance, and Denunciations of Oppressions
Roundtable Participant, Critically-Focused Pedagogical Praxes: Articulating Practices in Educating for Justice and Liberation

National Humanities Conference
Indianapolis, Indiana • 2023

Panelist, Making Pathways Meet: Promising Directions for Publicly Engaged Doctoral Training

International Studies Association–West
Pasadena, California • 2023

Roundtable Participant, Relationality and Pluriversality: An Approximation

International Studies Association (Virtual)
Online • August 2023

Panelist, Liberal Biases and Violence: Civilization, Othering, and Erasure
Roundtable Participant, Experiences of Early Career Instructors in International Studies: Struggles and Opportunities for Pedagogical Futures

International Studies Association (Annual Convention)
Montréal, Canada • 2023

Workshop Participant, GSCIS Author Symposium: Building a Stronger Collaborative Relationship Between Author and Editor (invitation only)