DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Biography: Ramla Bandele is a writer of plays and short stories. She is professor emeritus of political science and Africana Studies at Indiana University Purdue University and a long-time supporter and member of Kheprw Institute. Her works include plays: Facing the Rising Sun, Summer Storm, Fan Me Lord and Venom. She is also the author of Black Star: African American Activism and International Political Economy

Subfield(s): American Politics; Black Politics, African Diaspora, Arts and Politics, Representation

Dissertation: Diaspora movements in the international political economy: African-Americans and the Black Star Line (Ebscohost)

Committee: Page, Benjamin I (Chair); Hanchard, Michael G; Woo-Cumings, Meredith

Current: Author and Playwright, Independent / Self-Employed, Political Science

Placement: Research Fellow, University of Rochester, Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies

Biography: Jason Barabas is the Director of the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences at Dartmouth College as well as a Professor in the Department of Government. Dr. Barabas earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University and his undergraduate degree in Government from Dartmouth. In the years since, he has held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard and Princeton as well as academic faculty positions in New York, Florida, and Illinois. While at Dartmouth, Barabas played intercollegiate football on three Ivy League championship teams and he worked as an intern in the White House Office of Media Affairs. After graduating from Dartmouth, Jason Barabas was appointed as an economic policy advisor for the Governor of Illinois. Currently, Professor Barabas teaches and conducts research on public policy and opinion preferences, often with an emphasis on empirical methodology and research design.

Subfield(s): American Politics; American Politics, Methodology, Public Policy, Health Policy

Dissertation: Americans discuss Social Security: How deliberation affects public opinion (Ebscohost)

Committee: Page, Benjamin I (Chair); Chong, Dennis; Cook, Fay Lomax

Current: Professor, Dartmouth College, Department of Government

Placement: Postdoctoral Fellowship, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs

Institutional Website  |  Twitter:  @ScottWBarclay2  |  LinkedIn  |  Google Scholar

Biography: Scott Barclay is the Director of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. He received his PhD in Political Science from Northwestern University and his BA from the University of Queensland in Australia.

He recently served as a Program Director in the Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate at the National Science Foundation. He has held positions at Drexel University, UCLA, University at Albany, University of Washington, and UC Santa Cruz.  His ongoing research project explores the interplay of political, demographic, and social movement factors that influence the deployment of law. His research have been published in Law & Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, Political Research Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, and Law and Policy. His research findings have been directly referenced in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.

Subfields: American Politics, Law and Society, Public Policy, Social Movements, policy effects, sea ice loss, arctic governance

Dissertation:  An appealing act

Committee: Goldman, Jerry (Chair); Casper, Jay; 

Current:  School Director, Professor, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Arizona State University

Biography: I hold a Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University and a B.A. in Sociology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. In the 2019-2020 academic year, I was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Weatherhead Center Research Cluster on Challenges to Democracy, at Harvard University. My research focuses on populism, political parties, and political representation in Latin America. My book project conceptualizes and explains societal polarization under populist rule in the Andes. My work on comparative historical analysis, process tracing, and concept formation has been published in the Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism, Sociological Methods & Research, British Journal of Sociology, and Quality & Quantity International Journal of Methodology.

Subfield(s): Comparative Politics, Methods; populism, political parties, and political representation in Latin America

Dissertation: Populist Coalitions in Latin America: Polarization, Organization and Identity (Ebscohost)

Committee: Mahoney, James L (Chair); Gibson, Edward L (Co-Chair); Seawright, Jason W; Levitsky, Steven (Harvard)

Current: Assistant Professor, Universidad Católica del Uruguay, Social and Political Sciences

Placement: Post-Doctoral Fellow, Harvard University, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

Biography: Birol Baskan received his PhD in political science from Northwestern University in 2006 and taught at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Qatar from 2010-2018, Qatar University from 2007-2010, and the State University of New York-Fredonia in 2006-2007. His research looks at the roles religion and religious actors play in creating, maintaining, undermining, and destroying political order in the Middle East and in the international politics of the Persian/Arabian Gulf and Turkish foreign policy. Baskan is the author of Turkey and Qatar in the Tangled Geopolitics of the Middle East (Palgrave, 2016) and From Religious Empires to Secular States (Routledge, 2014), and co-editor of State-Society Relations in the Arab Gulf States (Gerlach, 2014).

Subfield(s): Comparative Politics; Contemporary religious movements and ideologies, state-religion relations in Turkey and the broader Middle East, state-building in Turkey and the Gulf, international politics of the Gulf, Turkish foreign policy

Dissertation: Religious institutions and state building: Incorporation vs. exclusion? (Ebscohost)

Committee: Reno, William S (Chair); Gibson, Edward L; Deruluguian, Georgi

Current: Non-resident Scholar, Middle East institute

Placement: Assistant Professor, State University of New York-Fredonia, Department of Political Science

Biography: Daniel Bergan specializes in public opinion and experimental work on advocacy campaigns. He uses field experimental designs to test the impact of citizen contacts to policymakers on public policy. In recent work, he has also explored the sources of partisan polarization in public opinion. His academic publications have appeared in the Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, the Journal of Communication, and other journals.

Subfield(s): American Politics; Pubic Opinion, experimental politics, advocacy campaigns. citizen contact with policy makers, partisan polarization

Dissertation: Party campaign finance and electoral competition (Ebscohost)

Committee: Chong, Dennis (Chair); Herron, Michael C; Austen-Smith, Michael D

Current: Associate Professor, Michigan State University, Department of Communication and James Madison College

Placement: Yale University, Institution for Social and Political Studies

Biography: Abdeta’s professional experience begins with his employment at Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1992. This experience included serving as desk officer for Somalia and Ethiopia’s neighboring states, as Political officer at the Ethiopian Embassy in Djibouti, as Head of the Ethiopian Trade office in Hargeisa (April 2002-June 2006), Chief of the Cabinet at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (July 2006-August2008), Ethiopia’s Special Envoy to Somalia (August 2008-March 2009), and Head of the Conflict Early Warning and Response Unit (April 2009-November 2010), and Director General for African Affairs until 2012. He also served as Chief of Staff of the IGAD-led Mediation Team to resolve the crisis in the Republic of South Sudan and briefly for the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission to oversee the implementation of the Agreement to Resolve the Conflict in South Sudan. He is currently the Executive Director of the Centre for Dialogue, Research and Cooperation and holds a PhD from Northwestern University.

Subfield(s): International Relations; Ethiopian Democracy & Development

Dissertation: Sovereignty Preservation Attenuating it Elsewhere: The Political and Security Dimensions of Buffer Zones (Ebscohost)

Committee: Reno, William S (Chair); Caverley, Jonathan D; Henke, Marina Elisabeth Philippina

Current: Executive Director, Centre for Dialogue, Research and Cooperation

Placement: Chief of the Cabinet, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Biography: Florent BLANC, Ph.D., is a training officer at the Institute for Research and Education on Negotiation (ESSEC IRENE Paris, Singapore, Brussels). He is in charge of delivering training sessions on negotiation and mediation to clients from French and European institutions as well as from the private sector. From 2011 to 2016, as an international mediation project leader, he conducted various programs in West Africa alongside local and national authorities, especially in Mali. He continually lectured in masters program in the field of international relations and security and participated in conferences in France and abroad.

Subfield(s): International Relations; international mediation, security, Mali, counterterrorist policies and military ethics

Dissertation: Dissent after September 11 mobilization of librarians, ACLU, cities and lawyers (Ebscohost)

Committee: NaN (Chair); Loriaux, Michael M (Co-Chair); Balzacq, Thierry; Chebel, Ariane

Current: Negotiation training officer, ESSEC Business School, IRENE

Placement: Project Manager, Ecole de la paix Grenoble

Biography: NaN

Subfield(s): Comparative Politics

Dissertation: Power of position: French and German elites in the liberalization process (Ebscohost)

Committee: Loriaux, Michael M (Chair); Swenson, Peter A; Thelen, Kathy A

Current: Founder and Director, Bloom Language Services, LLC

Placement: Principal, Bloom Consulting GmbH

Biography: Marco Bocchese completed his PhD at the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University in 2018. He is currently working as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Subfield(s): International Relations; International Politics

Dissertation: Justice Cooperatives: Explaining State Attitudes toward the ICC (Ebscohost)

Committee: Reno, William S (Chair); Arjona, Ana Maria; Riedl, Rachel Beatty

Current: Assisant Professor , Webster Vienna Private University, Political Science

Placement: Adjunct Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago, Political Science

Biography: Toby Bolsen is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Georgia State University. His research focuses on political and science communication, public opinion, political behavior, experimental methods, and U.S. energy and climate policy. Professor Bolsen received the Outstanding Faculty Achievement Award from Georgia State University in 2015 for excellence in scholarship, instruction, and service to the university. In 2017, Bolsen was selected as a Kavli Fellow and attended the Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium in Ambon, Indonesia, sponsored by USAID and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In 2020, Bolsen was the recipient of the Teaching for Social Justice and Democracy Award from the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Instructing at GSU. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University in 2010.

Subfield(s): American Politics; Political behavior, public opinion, political communication, experimental methods, U.S. energy policy and climate change

Dissertation: Private behaviors for the public good: Citizens' actions and U.S. energy conservation (Ebscohost)

Committee: Druckman, James N (Chair); Chong, Dennis; Cook, Fay Lomax

Current: Associate Professor, Georgia State University, Department of Political Science

Placement: Assistant Professor, Georgia State University, Department of Political Science

Biography: I am a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. I defended my PhD thesis in Political Science at Northwestern University in June 2019. I have an M.A. in Political Science from the Graduate Research Institute of the State of Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ) [current IESP/UERJ] and a B.A. in Law from the University of São Paulo (USP). My general fields of study are comparative politics, Latin American politics, and methodology with expertise in qualitative methods. My current research concerns the effects of culture on a diverse set of topics of democratic functioning, especially political behaviour, elections, the representation of marginalized groups, political parties, corruption, and misinformation, with a focus on Brazil. I mainly employ ethnographic and historical methods in my research, and I also combine them with survey experiments.

Subfield(s): Comparative Politics; political behavior, political communication, political campaigns, political parties in developing democracies, elections, qualitative methods, ethnography

Dissertation: The Politics of Strength: Elections, Clientelism, and Programmatic Politics in the Backlands of Brazil (Ebscohost)

Committee: Mahoney, James L (Chair); Gibson, Edward L; Pearlman, Wendy R;

Current: Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow , University of Oxford, Nuffield College, Department of Politics and International Relations

Placement: Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow , University of Oxford, Nuffield College, Department of Politics and International Relations

Biography: I am a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. I defended my PhD thesis in Political Science at Northwestern University in June 2019. I have an M.A. in Political Science from the Graduate Research Institute of the State of Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ) [current IESP/UERJ] and a B.A. in Law from the University of São Paulo (USP). My general fields of study are comparative politics, Latin American politics, and methodology with expertise in qualitative methods. My current research concerns the effects of culture on a diverse set of topics of democratic functioning, especially political behaviour, elections, the representation of marginalized groups, political parties, corruption, and misinformation, with a focus on Brazil. I mainly employ ethnographic and historical methods in my research, and I also combine them with survey experiments.

Subfield(s): Comparative Politics; political behavior, political communication, political campaigns, political parties in developing democracies, elections, qualitative methods, ethnography

Dissertation: The Politics of Strength: Elections, Clientelism, and Programmatic Politics in the Backlands of Brazil (Ebscohost)

Committee: Mahoney, James L (Chair); Gibson, Edward L; Pearlman, Wendy R;

Current: Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow , University of Oxford, Nuffield College, Department of Politics and International Relations

Placement: Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow , University of Oxford, Nuffield College, Department of Politics and International Relations

Biography: Before starting doctoral studies, I was a staff director in the California State Senate working with communities affected by HIV/AIDS, one of a handful of out LGBT staffers in the state capitol at the time. This experience inspired my research on politics between global and local, including activism on race, gender, and sexuality, questions of marginalization and citizenship, and processes of community building and participation. I look at these in terms of economic change, in responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, in the new politics of food, and in local and transnational organizing against a wave of what I call “state homophobia.” My research and teaching also focus on economic justice, democratic practice, and state violence and human rights – by exploring the ethical in the political. While I pay attention to the key concepts and theories in comparative politics, I ask students and colleagues to think about the moral framework that informs politics and the ethical consequences of choices made within such frameworks.

Subfield(s): Comparative Politics; Social Movements, Moral and Ethical Political Philosophy, Human Rights, economic justice, democratic practice, and state violence and human rights, activism on race, gender, and sexuality, questions of marginalization and citizenship, and processes of community building and participation

Dissertation: Blood ties: Identity, citizenship, and the politics of AIDS in France and the United States (Ebscohost)

Committee: Loriaux, Michael M (Chair); Honig, Bonnie H; Page, Benjamin I

Current: Professor, Saint Michael's College , Department of Political Science

Placement: Visiting Research Scholar, University of Notre Dame, Department of Anthropology

Biography: Michelle Boyd is a scholar, writer, and audio producer who makes text and audio pieces about race, class, immigration, and cities. She is the author of the ethnography Jim Crow Nostalgia: Reconstructing Race in Bronzeville (2008), winner of the 2009 American Political Science Association's Race & Ethnicity Section Best Book Award. Her scholarship has also appeared in Urban Affairs Review, City & Society, and Journal of Urban Affairs and has received Best Paper awards from the Urban Affairs Association and the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.

Subfield(s): American Politics; race, class, immigration, and cities, ethnography

Dissertation: Reconstructing Bronzeville: Identity and the Construction of Racial Group Interests (Ebscohost)

Committee: NaN (Chair); Herbst, Susan; Binford, Henry ;

Current: Founder and Writing Coach, Inkwell Academic Writing Retreats

Placement: Faculty Fellow, University of Illinois at Chicago, Institute for the Humanities

Professional Website  |  Twitter: @CritAntiquities |  LinkedIn

Biography: I am a classicist and political scientist with a special interest in the ways that ancient worlds implicate contemporary life, especially from the perspective of critical political theory and political economy. I have taught political theory at the University of Sydney since 2018 and joined the Department of Classics and Ancient History as Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 2020. In 2020, I founded the Critical Antiquities Network and the online Critical Antiquities Workshop together with Ben Brown (CAH USyd) to connect international researchers who work between ancient traditions and contemporary critical theories.

Subfield(s): Ancient Greek Political Thought and Practice Aristotle Classical Greek Literature, especially Tragedy History of Modern Political Thought Contemporary Democratic Theory Critical Theory

Dissertation: The Use of Humans: Aristotle, Marx, and the Specters of Indeterminate Utility (Ebscohost)

Committee: Lars Tønder (Chair); Sara Monoson, Richard Kraut (Philosophy), Samuel Weber (German), Miguel Vatter (Flinders University)

Current: Lecturer, University of Wollongong, School of Liberal Arts

Placement: Lecturer, University of Wollongong, School of Liberal Arts

Biography: Marissa Brookes is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. She earned her PhD in political science from Northwestern University in 2013. Her research focuses on international political economy, labor movements, transnational activism, and the politics of work and employment. Her publications appear in Comparative Political Studies, Development and Change, the Labor Studies Journal, the Global Labour Journal, and PS: Political Science and Politics, among others. Her book, The New Politics of Transnational Labor: Why Some Alliances Succeed (2019, Cornell University Press), analyzes the causes of success and failure in transnational labor campaigns. Dr. Brookes’ research has been funded by the US Fulbright Program, the Hellman Fellows Fund, the German Research Foundation, the Dispute Resolution Research Center at the Kellogg School of Management, and the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. She is also Principle Investigator on the Transnational Labor Alliances Database Project, which documents over 100 transnational labor campaigns from the late 1990s to the present.

Subfield(s): Comparative Politics; International Politics

Dissertation: Transnational Labor Alliances: Why Some Succeed (Ebscohost)

Committee: Thelen, Kathy A (Chair); Mahoney, James L; Page, Benjamin I

Current: Associate Professor, University of California, Riverside, Political Science , Faculty Affiliate: Labor Studies Program

Placement: Instructor, Northwestern University School of Continuing Studies, Political Science

Biography: Javier Burdman is Research Fellow in the School for Interdisciplinary Social Studies at the National University of San Martin in Argentina.

Subfield(s): Political Theory; Contemporary political theory, especially Arendt, Lyotard, and Derrida, Kant's moral and political philosophy, Theories of political action and judgment, Knowledge and politics.

Dissertation: Politics after Totalitarianism: Rethinking Evil, Action, and Judgment in Kant, Arendt, and Lyotard (Ebscohost)

Committee: Dietz, Mary Golden (Chair); Fenves, Peter D. (Comparative Literary Studies); Menke, Christoph (Department of German)

Current: Research Fellow (Tenured), National University of San Martin

Placement: Postdoctoral Fellowship, Goethe-Uiversität Frankfurt

Biography: Teacher and scholar of political science with particular expertise on the Middle East, international relations, energy, and democracy. An experienced teacher, researcher, and administrator with a newly published book on the Arab Spring, excellent teaching and communication skills, and comfort with many types of administrative and planning work. Considering a move from academia to the policy world.

Subfield(s): Comparative Politics; Comparative Politics, Middle East Politics

Dissertation: One Hand: Military Structure and Middle East Revolts (Ebscohost)

Committee: Reno, William S (Chair); Pearlman, Wendy R; Riedl, Rachel Beatty

Current: Visiting Assistant Professor, College of William and Mary, Political Science

Placement: Lecturer, Northwestern University in Qatar, Political Science

Biography: I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University, specializing in political psychology, extremism, public opinion, racial and ethnic politics, and quantitative methods. I study extremism in democracies. More specifically, my work explores what extremism is, who people blame for extremism, and what encourages and discourages extremism. Across this work, I consider extremism in the public and at the elite level. I examine both a general approach to extremism and several specific kinds – including racial extremism, partisan extremism, and populism. My research on extremism relies on various methods, using lab experiments, quasi-experiments, survey experiments, text-as-data, surveys, artificial intelligence, and big data from Google and Twitter.

Subfield(s): American Politics; political psychology, extremism, public opinion, racial and ethnic politics, and quantitative methods

Dissertation: It's All about Who You Meet: The Political Consequences of Intergroup Experiences with Strangers (Ebscohost)

Committee: Druckman, James N (Chair); Merseth Cook, Julianne Lee; Rogers, Reuel R

Current: Assistant Professor, Brigham Young University, Department of Political Science

Placement: Assistant Professor, Clemson University