Rebecca is an American political scientist, human rights expert, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati, where she also serves as the Assistant Director of the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). She holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master’s degree from McGill University and earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto.
Her research operates at the vital intersection of international law, international human rights, and international security, specifically focusing on how states navigate rights tradeoffs during real or perceived crises. Sanders has published extensive empirical work tracking contemporary threats to democratic norms, authoritarian populism, and the transnational politics of anti-feminism.
She is the author of the monograph Plausible Legality: Legal Culture and Political Imperative in the Global War on Terror (Oxford University Press, 2018), which critically investigates how international legal and humanitarian frameworks are manipulated by governments to justify exceptional state security practices—including mass surveillance, targeted killing, indefinite detention, and torture. Her recent National Science Foundation-funded projects examine public health and civil liberties trade-offs during the COVID-19 pandemic and the opportunistic securitization of migration policies.