Ali Altiok
Ph.D. Candidate, Peace Studies and Political Science · University of Notre Dame
I study what makes young people trust, and mistrust, their governments in digitalizing states.
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Peace Studies and Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. My research focuses on youth political behavior, specifically examining what drives young people's trust and mistrust in government, how they interact with state digital skills programs, and how they act politically on social media.
My dissertation relies on extensive original fieldwork in Kenya to examine youth political behavior in two settings: government-sponsored ICT hubs and social media. To evaluate institutional trust, I pair observational data from government digital hubs and 35 key-informant interviews with an original 1,072-respondent survey that integrates quantitative metrics with qualitative open-ended responses. To address digital youth politics specifically, I pair a smartphone field experiment on political AI deepfakes involving 320 participants with 48 focus group discussions on online engagement.
The Pragmatic Logic of Youth Political Trust in a Digitalizing Kenya
Young people are commonly flattened into reductive binaries, viewed either as threats to democratic stability due to their disengagement from conventional politics, or romanticized as drivers of democratic renewal through direct action against corruption and authoritarianism. Both portrayals rest on the assumption that youth harbor deep cynicism toward public institutions. My dissertation challenges this perspective by systematically analyzing what young Kenyans mean when they express trust or mistrust in their government and elected representatives. Uncovering a pragmatic political logic, I show that young people extend trust on material grounds, calibrating their support not as a simple transaction, but as an evaluation of what they judge elected representatives are realistically capable of delivering in their context. The dissertation examines three settings: how young people evaluate the state, how they encounter it through government digital programs, and how they contest it online. Across all three, political trust emerges as a grounded assessment of the possible rather than a final verdict on democracy itself.
Grounded in three rounds of original fieldwork in Kenya (2024 to 2026) across Western, Coastal, and Central regions, my methodology pairs broad empirical scale with contextual depth. Partnering with local digital skills trainers granted access to remote rural vocational centers to execute an original survey (N=1,072) featuring embedded qualitative audio prompts. To examine digital politics at the edge of the digital divide, I conducted an in-person smartphone field experiment (N=320) testing political AI deepfakes on participants' own handsets, pairing real-time behavioral data with 48 focus group discussions.
Working Papers
Beyond Trust Scores: How Kenyan Youth Interpret and Evaluate Government
State Digitalization in Kenya: How Youth View Government-Sponsored ICT Hubs
Laughing at Lies, Liking the Lie: Behavioral Signals of Deepfake Detection Among Kenyan Youth
Selected Publications
Altiok, A. and Ilhanli, M. “Subverting the ‘Adult Gaze’ in the Kurdish–Turkish Conflict: The Case of ‘Kuro’.” International Political Sociology, 2026. Collective discussion.
Parrin, A., Simpson, G., Altiok, A. and Wamai, N. “Youth and Transitional Justice.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 16, no. 1 (2022): 1–18. Editorial introducing the special issue, which I co-edited.
Under review and in progress
Altiok, A., Villalaz, M. D. R. and Hughes, C. “The World Bank, the Liberal Peace and the Suppression of Justice.” Under review.
Altiok, A. “How Do Youth Impact Peacemaking? Youth Inclusion in Yemen’s 2011–2014 Political Transition.” Working paper.
Book chapters
Altiok, A. “What Makes Youth Participation Meaningful? The Pitfalls of Merging Counter-Terrorism with the Youth, Peace and Security Agenda.” In H. Berents, C. Bolten and S. McEvoy-Levy (eds.), Building Sustainable Peace with and for Young People. Manchester University Press, 2024.
Altiok, A. “Barış Süreçlerinde Gençlerin Rolleri: 2011–2014 Yemen Devrimi ve Ulusal Diyalog Konferansı” [Youth Roles in Peace Processes: The 2011–2014 Yemeni Revolution and National Dialogue Conference]. In E. Dilek and C. Dizdaroğlu (eds.), Eleştirel Barış Çalışmaları: Kavramlar, Aktörler ve Pratikler [Critical Peace Studies: Concepts, Actors and Practices]. Imge, 2024.
Altiok, A. “Squeezed Agency: Youth Resistance to the Securitization of Peacebuilding.” In M. O. Ensor (ed.), Securitizing Youth: Young People’s Role in the Global Peace and Security Agenda. Rutgers University Press, 2021.
Altiok, A., Berents, H., Grizelj, I. and McEvoy-Levy, S. “Youth, Peace and Security.” In F. Hampson, J. Kent and A. Özerdem (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Peace, Security and Development. Routledge, 2020.
Teaching
I am prepared to teach courses in comparative politics and political behavior, peace and conflict studies, African politics, international organizations, and research methods, including field methods, survey design, youth participatory research, and experimental design in low-resource settings.
At the University of Notre Dame, I have served as a teaching assistant for courses in Middle East Politics and Introduction to Peace Studies. I am also regularly invited to guest lecture on youth politics at universities in the United States and Europe. For over ten years, I have mentored young people from the Global South through collaborative research that treats youth as active partners.
Teaching statement and sample syllabi available on request.
Selected policy reports
My scholarship maintains a direct connection to policy and practice. I have written policy research for the United Nations, the United States Institute of Peace, Saferworld, and Interpeace, particularly on the UN Security Council's Youth, Peace and Security Agenda and UN multilateral counter-terrorism frameworks.
Altiok, A. and Street, J. The Voice of the Fourth Pillar: How Security Council Discourse Drove Counter-Terrorism Expansion at the UN. Saferworld, 2025.
Altiok, A., Porras, P. and Lee, P. Fostering Youth Participation in International Peacebuilding. United States Institute of Peace, 2023.
Altiok, A. and Street, J. A Fourth Pillar of the United Nations? The Rise of Counter-Terrorism. Saferworld, 2020.
Altiok, A. and Grizelj, I. We Are Here: An Integrated Approach to Youth Inclusive Peace Processes. UN Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, 2019.
Curriculum vitae (PDF) aaltiok@nd.edu Google Scholar ORCID
Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies
University of Notre Dame · Notre Dame, IN 46556