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Ioannis
Stivachtis
Director, International Studies
Dr. Ioannis Stivachtis is Associate Professor and Director
of the International Studies Program. He holds a Ph.D. in
Politics & International Relations and an M.A. in International
Relations & Strategic Studies from Lancaster University
(UK); and a Postgraduate Certificate in International Law
and a B.A. in International & European Studies from Panteion
University (Greece). He has been holder of a multi-year scholarship
awarded by the State Scholarship Foundation of the Hellenic
Republic. His research interests include International Relations
Theory, International Political Theory, Security Studies,
and European Union's Enlargement and Foreign Relations.
Other current positions and activities include: Member of
the Academic Committee and Head of the Politics & International
Affairs Research Unit, Athens Institute of Education and Research
(ATINER); Scientific Expert, European Commission - Research
Directorate General; Scientific Advisor, Department of International
Cooperation and Development, International Olympic Committee
(IOC); Vice-President and Program Co-Chair, Comparative and
Interdisciplinary Studies Section (CISS) - International Studies
Association (ISA); Secretary, English School Section (ESS)
- ISA; Member of the International Advisory Board, Research
Institute for European & American Studies (RIEAS); and
Member of the Society for the Study of Difference (SSD). Dr.
Stivachtis is also member of professional organizations such
as ISA, EUSA, APSA, and BISA, as well as member of working
groups such as the European Consortium for Political Research
(ECPR) Standing Group on Security Issues and the Standing
Group on Sovereignty and Its Discontents (SAID). In addition,
he serves as Member of the Editorial Board of SPECTRA: Journal
for Social, Political, Ethical and Cultural Thought; Journal
of International & Cross-cultural Affairs and Journal
of Multicultural, Gender and Minority Studies; Member of the
Academic Board of the Journal of Global Change and Governance;
Associate Reviewer of The International Journal of Diversity
in Organizations, Communities, and Nations and the journal
of Peace, Conflict and Development; and manuscript reviewer
for Ashgate, Blackwell, and Oxford University Press.
His previous academic and professional appointments include:
Academic Dean and International Relations Program Director
at IFM University (Switzerland); Diplomacy & International
Relations Program Advisor at Schiller International University
(Switzerland); Visiting Associate Professor at The International
University-Vienna (Austria); Visiting Professor at the Geneva
School of Diplomacy (Switzerland); Visiting Lecturer at the
European Institute of the University of Geneva; Scientific
Advisor of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education and
Culture; Scientific Expert working with the Austrian Federal
Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense; Research Fellow
and Project Consultant at the United Nations Institute for
Disarmament Research (UNIDIR); Senior Fellow at the Austrian
Institute for Strategic Studies (IIS); Senior Researcher and
Consultant at ARIS Research & Consulting Office for Security
Studies (Austria); and Research Fellow at the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He has also
taught in various diplomatic and military academies.
He is the author of; Co-operative Security and Non-Offensive
Defense in the Zone of War (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2001);
and The Enlargement of International Society (London: Macmillan,
1998); co-author of Non-Offensive Defense in the Middle East
(New York: United Nations Publications 1998); editor of Global
Affairs in a Turbulent world: Perspectives and Controversies
(Athens: ATINER 2008); The State of European Integration (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2007); International Order in a Globalizing World
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); International Governance &
International Security (Athens: ATINER, 2005); Current Issues
in European Integration (Athens: ATINER, 2004); and European
Union's Mediterranean Enlargement (Frankfurt: Peter Lang,
2002); and co-editor of Turkey-European Union Relations: Dilemmas,
Opportunities and Constraints (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books,
2008) and European Union's Mediterranean Enlargement (Frankfurt:
Peter Lang, 2000). Dr. Stivachtis has written more than 35
articles and chapters published edited volumes and journals
like the Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Global
Dialogue, Journal of Strategic Studies, Mediterranean Politics,
Mediterranean Quarterly, and Europe-Asia Studies.
Dr. Stivachtis is currently working on the finalization of
a book entitled Good Governance and Political Conditionality:
The Standard of 'Civilization' in Contemporary International
Society, as well as on a book project entitled Terrorism and
International Society (tentative title). Finally he is co-editing
a volume on The Economic Dimension of Turkey's Accession to
the European Union.
Email: Ioannis
Stivachtis
Ilja A. Luciak
Professor and Department Chair, Political Science
(J.D., University of Vienna, Austria, 1980; Ph.D., University
of Iowa, 1987).
His research interests include democratic theory and gender
politics, revolutionary movements, reproductive rights, and
globalization. He teaches in the areas of Latin American politics,
development theory and revolutionary change and has received
teaching awards from the Department of Political Science,
the Political Science Honors Society and the College of Arts
and Sciences. For the past 20 years he has conducted field
research in Central America, Cuba and Colombia focusing on
gender equality and democratization. He has been a visiting
professor /fellow at the Universidad Centroamericana in Nicaragua,
Stockholm University, Sweden, Universität Innsbruck,
Austria, and at The Society for the Humanities, Cornell University.
Professor Luciak has written for Swedish, Austrian, British,
Mexican, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran and North American publications.
He has worked as a consultant for the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP), the United Nations Women's Fund (UNIFEM),
and the Swedish International Development Authority (Sida),
has given numerous invited lectures and organized several
international conferences on Central America. He has served
as an invited election observer in El Salvador and Nicaragua
and has been an official delegate to several United Nations
conferences. Recent publications include, "Party and
State in Cuba: Gender Equality in Political Decision-making."
Politics & Gender, Volume 1, Issue 2 (Forthcoming) and
"Implementing Gender-Equality Provisions: Lessons from
the Central American Peace Accords." Critical Half. Vol.
2, Issue 1 (2005). His latest book, After the Revolution:
Gender and Democracy in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) uses a gender lens
to examine the transformation of the revolutionary Left from
armed guerrilla movements into political parties. An earlier
version of this book entitled, Después de la revolución:
Igualdad de género y democracia en El Salvador, Nicaragua,
y Guatemala has been published in Spanish by Universidad Centroamericana
editores in El Salvador. Professor Luciak has recently completed
a multi-year study on "Gender Equality and Democratization
in Central America and Cuba" for the European Commission.
He has been commissioned to contribute to the 10-Year-Evaluation
of the Beijing Women's Conference, which is coordinated by
the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development
(UNRISD). His report is entitled: "Joining Forces for
Democratic Governance: Women's Alliance Building for Post-war
Reconstruction in Central America." Professor Luciak
is currently completing a book manuscript entitled, Unintended
Consequences: Gender and Politics in Cuba.
Alice M. de Sturler
Alice M. de Sturler is a Dutch lawyer with specializations
in criminology, contract law and human rights. She received
her law degree from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the
Netherlands. Her criminology thesis concerned the treatment
of detainees in Dutch police detention cells. Her contract
law thesis concerned misrepresentation and the duty to disclose.
After graduation, she worked as a corporate lawyer in the
private and corporate sector in the Netherlands and Switzerland.
However, she soon became disenchanted by human greed, which
convinced her to change directions and devote her efforts
to humanity. As a result, she joined the Swiss Section of
Amnesty International.
Alice specialized in the fields of capital punishment, torture,
and women's rights. Her tasks ranged from campaign planning
and program development to field research. As Head of the
Death Penalty Coordination Group she visited prisons and death
rows in the USA and built an extensive network with law enforcement,
murder victim family members, death row prisoners, their lawyers
and families. She also taught tolerance and human rights in
Swiss high schools. Alice represented the Swiss Section of
Amnesty International at various national and international
events and was a delegate during the 1996 Olympic Games Tour
of the South in Atlanta. The tour included conferences, visits
to death rows in the South, and networking with local grass
root organizations in Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama.
In 1998, she moved to the United States of America and worked
as an adjunct professor at the College of Law of the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her courses for graduate
students focused on capital punishment and grey areas in the
law. Later she developed and taught discovery law and human
rights courses to undergraduate students in the living-and-learning
programs of Unit One in Allen Hall and Global Crossroads in
the Pennsylvania Avenue Residence Hall. Alice has worked with
various police departments in the Netherlands and in the USA.
Members of the law enforcement community have frequently served
as guest speakers in her classes.
In 2006, she moved to Blacksburg and joined the Department
of Political Science and International Studies at Virginia
Tech. Alice teaches human rights courses that focus on capital
punishment as applied worldwide, its history and legal challenges,
cases of wrongful convictions, and false confessions during
police interrogations. Special attention is given to criminal
law statutes and to the position and influence of murder victim
family members in other countries. Other main topics are a
comparative overview of honor killings, the treatment of widows,
including widow burnings, violence against women, including
incarcerated women and mothers, hate crimes and hate groups,
and an analysis of school shootings. Discussions, debates,
and guest speakers form an important part of her classes.
Email : Alice
de Sturler
Parakh Hoon, Assistant
Professor, (Ph.D., University of Florida, 2005). His scholarly
work and research interests center on the political economy
of development and environment, governance and local democracy,
and how emerging international environmental and development
norms articulate with local livelihoods and practices. He
teaches in the area of African Politics, Political Economy,
International Development, and Global Environmental Politics.
For the last decade Professor Hoon has conducted field research
in Botswana, Zambia, and India and has been working on southern
African politics and its environment, including the politics
of wildlife conservation and agricultural development, and
its effects on rural communities. He has been a visiting assistant
professor at the School of International Service, American
University in Washington DC, and the Department of Political
Science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He
has also worked as a research analyst with local NGOs in India
and at the United Nations Development Program in New York.
He has been a non-resident fellow with the Institutions and
Governance Program at World Resources Institute in Washington,
DC where he was involved in two comparative research projects
on local democracy and natural resource management, and commodity
chain analysis as a policy tool.
Professor Hoon has published on the politics of community
conservation, the relationship between governance and sustainable
livelihoods, and local institutional innovation. His publications
include, "Impersonal Markets and Personal Communities?
Wildlife, Conservation, and Development in Botswana,"
Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy, 7:143-160,
2004; "Governance and Sustainable Livelihoods: Pinning
down two troublesome concepts," with Goran Hyden, in
Hans Bressers and Walter Rosenbaum, eds., Achieving Sustainable
Development: The Challenge of Governance across Social Scales
(Praeger, 2004); and most recently "Working is Celebrating:
The Syncretic Politics of Labor Transformation in Rural Zambia,"
in Dennis Galvan and Rudra Sil, eds., Reconfiguring Institutions
Across Time and Space: Syncretic Responses to Challenges of
Political and Economic Transformation (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan,
2007). Professor Hoon is currently working on a comparative
project in southern Africa on bottom-up decentralized community-based
and recent trans-boundary/transfrontier conservation approaches.
Email: Parakh
Hoon
Christopher Marcoux
(M.A., University of Massachusetts, 2006; Ph.D., University
of Massachusetts, expected Fall 2007), has research and teaching
interests in international organizations, international law,
international environmental politics, qualitative and quantitative
methods. After he defends his dissertation, "Theoretical
Approaches to the Design of Multilateral Environmental Agreements,"
in August of 2007, he will begin the process of transforming
it into a book. This research evaluates competing hypotheses
explaining the membership, delegation, and flexibility provisions
of Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) derived from
realist, liberal, and constructivist theories of international
relations. Using a multi-method approach including statistical
analysis, structural equation modeling, and case studies,
he develops a nuanced theory of institutional design that
emphasizes different causal forces at different levels of
negotiation proceedings. In addition to this research, he
is working on improving available data on the design and structure
of MEAs, evaluating the applicability of his observations
to economic and security related international agreements,
and formal modeling approaches to institutional design. He
is interested expanding his research to evaluate the impacts
of institutional design choices on the effectiveness of international
environmental institutions. Professor Marcoux has presented
his research at annual meetings of the Northeast Political
Science Association, the American Political Science Association,
and the International Studies Association. He has a review
of work on delegation in international organizations forthcoming
in International Studies Review.
Scott G. Nelson
Assistant Professor, Political Science
(Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2002)
Scott Nelson began teaching in the political science department
at Virginia Tech in 1998. He has been an affiliated faculty
member in the International Studies program since 2000. His
research interests include international relations theory
and political theory, international law and organization,
and international political economy. He teaches courses in
these areas at the undergraduate level and also in the department's
MA and OLMA programs.
Dr. Nelson is currently working on a book entitled Sovereignty
and the Limits of the Liberal Imagination. The manuscript
examines and critiques several of the classical theoretical
foundations of domestic and international organization, concentrating
on the contestable conceptions of community, order, justice,
freedom, responsibility and wealth developed by the major
political theorists of the modern epoch. The book is designed
to accomplish two main tasks. First, it is a study in the
major liberal and enlightenment theories of the modern tradition
and is intended to provide students of international relations
with a basic grounding in the classic political theories of
modernity. Second, it is a critical study that interrogates
how political theories are invoked by the traditions of international
relations across the modern epoch. The critical thrust of
the argument is that the accepted discourses of world politics
are constructed by way of particular interpretive negotiations
of what sovereign power is and what it must be made to accomplish
in domestic and world politics.
The book will therefore be of use to upper-division undergraduate
and graduate students enrolled in critical survey courses
in the history and theory of international studies. It is
also directed to policy audiences in such international organizations
as the UN, WTO and the IMF-World Bank.
An article of Dr. Nelson's which elaborates these themes,
entitled "Sovereignty, Ethics, Community," will
be published in the journal Philosophy and Social Criticism
(Vol. 29) in 2004. A second article, entitled "Kant,
Foucault, and the 'Problem of Globalization," will be
published in "Alternatives" (Vol. 29, No. 4, Fall
2004). Dr. Nelson was the recipient of the 2000 Department
of Political Science Outstanding Teaching Recognition Award.
In addition to his on-campus classes in Blacksburg, he regularly
teaches online courses in the Virginia Tech Institute for
Distance and Distributed Learning.cott
G. Nelson
Arnold Schuetz
Arnold Schuetz (MA Tulane, Ph.D. Wisconsin) has worked
in jouralism in Frankfurt and New York, and has been
in the U.S. Foreign Service before coming to Virginia
Tech in 1978. He has taught courses in History, Political
Science, and International Studies and was the Director
of International Studies from 1991 to 2002. He officially
retired at the end of 2002, but he continues to teach
courses and organizes the spring semester in Riva San
Vitale, Switzerland for the University. His academic
specializations are Modern Germany, labor history, European
unification, and national security issues.
Email: Arnold
Schuetz
LAURA SJOBERG, (Ph.D.
University of Southern California, 2004; JD, Boston College
Law School, 2007, BA, University of Chicago). Her areas of
teaching and research include: international security, gender
in international relations, international law, international
ethics, international political theory, the Middle East, active
learning (debate, mock trial, model UN), and quantitative
and qualitative methods. She has taught courses at the University
of Southern California, Brandeis University, Merrimack College,
and Duke University before coming to Virginia Tech.
Dr Sjoberg's first book, Gender, Justice, and the Wars in
Iraq (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), presents a feminist reformulation
of just war theory and an application of that reformulated
theory to the wars in Iraq since the end of the Cold War.
She is also author (with Caron Gentry) of Mothers, Monsters,
and Whores: Women's Violence in Global Politics (Zed Books
2007). Her work has been published in the International Feminist
Journal of Politics and International Studies Quarterly. She
also has articles forthcoming in International Politics, Security
Studies, and International Studies Perspectives. Her research
has been funded by the Women and Public Policy Program and
the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at
the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Women
and International Security, the Kenan Institute for Ethics,
the Center for International Studies at the University of
Southern California, the Center for the Study of Sexuality
in the Military at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
Boston College Law School, the Century Foundation, and the
Bannerman Foundation.
Dr. Sjoberg is working on a special issue of Security Studies
on feminist contributions to the field and editing a follow-up
book. She is also co-editor (with Amy Eckert) of New Problems,
Old Solutions: Rethinking 21st Century Security (publisher
TBD) and a special section in the Cambridge Review of International
Affairs entitled "Innovations in Just War Theory,"
In addition to these research projects, Dr. Sjoberg is editing
a textbook, Women and War in the 21st Century, with Carol
Cohn (Polity 2008).
Dr. Sjoberg is a member of Women In International Security
(WIIS), the Women's Caucus for Political Science, the Women's
Caucus for International Relations, the American Political
Science Association, the International Studies Association,
the American Bar Association, the New England Political Science
Association, the Northeastern Political Science Association,
the National Women's Studies Association, the Boston Consortium
for Gender, Security and Human Rights, the Consortium on Qualitative
Research Methods, and the American Philosophical Association.
She serves as a reviewer for International Studies Quarterly,
the International Feminist Journal of Politics, International
Security, the European Journal of International Relations,
Ethics and International Affairs, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers
and Routledge Publishers. She is a member of the editorial
board for Feminist Theory and Gender Studies of the International
Studies Compendium. She has served as a Contributing Editor
to the Journal of Public and International Affairs. Dr. Sjoberg
is currently serving as the Program Chair for the Western
Region of the International Studies Association. She is also
the Vice-Chair and Program Chair of the Feminist Theory and
Gender Studies Section of the International Studies Association.
Edward Weisband
Princeton University, B.A., 1961, Stanford University, M.A.,
the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the
Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D., 1969
Professsor Weisband holds the Edward S. Diggs Endowed Chair
Professorship in the Department of Political Science of the
College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences and is also a member
of the faculty of the Government and International Affairs
Program of the Virginia Tech School of Public and International
Affairs and a Senior Fellow of the Virginia Tech Institute
for Governance and Accountability.
While at SAIS, he was a four-year recipient of the congressionally
funded National Defense Foreign Language Act (NDFL) grant.
This permitted him to develop advanced language proficiency
in both French and Turkish as well as to complete his dissertation
field work in Turkey. At this time, he conducted extensive
interviews with the second founding President of the Turkish
Republic, Ismet Inonu, and with a generation of Turkish foreign
policy leaders who had influenced Turkish foreign policy during
the interwar and wartime period. This research led in 1973
to publication of Turkish Foreign Policy: Small State Diplomacy
and Great Power Politics, Princeton University Press. This
book was subsequently translated into Turkish and published
in book and newspaper serialized form by MILLIYET Press. It
has attained a near classic status in Turkish historiography
and is considered to be a major study of modern Turkish political
history.
In 1998, Professor Weisband, at the behest of the Inonu Foundation,
delivered the keynote address at a conference held where the
original meeting occurred on the 55 th anniversary of the
November 1943 Cairo meeting between Inonu, Roosevelt and Churchill.
Professor Weisband has completed several studies focusing
on accountability and transparency in U.S. foreign policy.
In 1969, he coedited a study of regionalism and free trade,
The Politics and Economics of Cooperation: A Free Trade Association
Among Canada, Britain and the United States, New York University
Press. In 1971, he coauthored, Word Politics: Verbal Strategy
Between the Superpowers, Oxford University Press, that contrasted
American and Russian interventions in Latin American and Eastern
Europe. In 1973, he wrote, A Paradigm of Lockean Liberalism:
The Ideology of American Foreign Policy, Sage Publications,
a critical examination of U.S. justification for military
interventions in Indochina.
His 1975 study, Resignation-In-Protest: Loyalty to Team versus
Loyalty to Conscience, that compared resignation policies
and practices at Cabinet and sub-Cabinet levels in U.S. and
British governments, was published in the aftermath of Watergate
and U.S. engagement in Indochina. Widely reviewed in the American
and British press, it was selected by The New York Times Book
Review as the “Editor’s Choice” and among the “Most Noteworthy
Books” published in 1975. During the same year, the Christopher
Society bestowed its National Literary Award on this study
citing its contribution to ethical discourse in American public
life. Originally published in hardback by the Viking Press,
Penguin published it in soft cover for distribution in the
U.K. as well as the United States. In 1974, Professor Weisband
coedited a comparative study of secrecy and freedom of information
policies, Secrecy and Foreign Policy, Oxford University Pres.
In 1979, he also coauthored, Foreign Policy By Congress, Oxford
University Press, a study of the 93 rd Congress and its attempt
to transform U.S. foreign policy decision-making in ways designed
to make foreign policy more accountable to Congress. Professor
Weisband has edited two books oriented to pedagogy and teaching,
both published by Westview Press. The first, Teaching World
Politics: Contending Pedagogies for a New World Order, and
the second, Poverty Amidst Plenty: World Political Economy
and Distributive Justice received a wide audience in Europe
as well as the United States, the former as a guide to national
academic evaluation in several European educational systems,
the latter as a widely adopted text with respect to equality
and development. Major portions of Poverty Amidst Plenty are
included in the customized text assigned in Harvard University’s
core curricular course on Ethics and International Relations.
Since coming to Virginia Tech in 1990, Professor Weisband
has focused his research on international monitoring regimes,
global accountabilities, the International Labor Organization
(ILO), and core international labor standards. In 1991, Professor
Weisband was the first American to have been invited to participate
as a Scholar-in-Residence by the ILO International Institute
of Labor Studies in its International Labor Studies Program.
In 1995, the ILO commissioned him to examine Industrial and
Sectoral Committees, its largest multilateral program dealing
with international labor issues on a sectoral or industry-to-industry
basis. The ILO subsequently published his analysis that, in
turn, generated a series of sectoral committee reform proposals.
These proposals were subsequently included in an ILO working
document submitted to the ILO Governing Body. During 1996-1997,
this document, that included several proposals initiated by
the Weisband report, was debated, amended and in some instances
adopted by delegations representing over 160 ILO member states.
In addition to his focus on ILO sectoral activities, Professor
Weisband has examined core international labor standards by
applying quantitative as well as qualitative methodologies
in the evaluation of the ILO monitoring or supervisory machinery.
He authored a now often cited empirical analysis of core labor
standards and state behavior using his own data set to assess
state behaviors against world averages and standard deviations,
“Discursive Multilateralism: Global Benchmarks, Shame and
Learning in the ILO Labor Standards Monitoring Regime,” International
Studies Quarterly (2000), Vol.44, No. 4, 643-666; he coauthored,
with a former Virginia Tech undergraduate, a companion study,
“Freedom of Association Violations: An Empirical Analysis
of the Annual Reports of the International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions,” Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 1,
167-186. In 2004, he completed a quantitatively grounded discourse
analysis using performative speech act theory to investigate
over 2000 cases of complaints brought before the ILO Committee
on Freedom of Association, “Verdictive Discourses, Shame and
Judicialization in Pursuit of Freedom of Rights.” Professor
Weisband is currently working on several projects including
a coedited volume on global accountabilities.
Throughout his career, Professor Weisband has devoted primary
attention to teaching and pedagogy and is nationally recognized
for contributions to distinguished teaching, especially of
introductory subjects. In 1983, he was promoted to Distinguished
Teaching Professor, a rank above full professor, by the State
University of New York (SUNY), having received numerous citations
for teaching excellence including the Danforth Foundation
Associateship for Excellence in Teaching and the SUNY Chancellor’s
Award for Teaching Excellence in 1979. His reputation as a
teaching scholar was further enhanced in 1987 when the Council
for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in cooperation
with the Carnegie Foundation, selected him as the Gold Medal
Finalist in its National Professor of the Year competition.
Professor Weisband also was named by CASE as the New York
State Professor of the Year during the same year. In 1990,
Professor Weisband inaugurated the Edward Singleton Diggs
Endowed Chair at Virginia Tech. In 1992, he received the Philip
and Sadie Sporn Award for Outstanding Teaching of Introductory
Subjects and has also been cited twice by the Pi Sigma Alpha
Political Science Honors Society as the outstanding professor
of the year. Upon coming to Virginia Tech, Professor Weisband
initiated the proposal to establish at Virginia Tech the Diggs
Teaching Roundtable and Teaching Scholar Award, a program
that has now emerged as a form of major recognition of teaching
excellence and as an important Virginia Tech faculty forum
to explore pedagogical approaches and instructional methods.
Professor Weisband has served as the academic director of
the Virginia Tech summer Washington Semester program seven
times and has conducted the Virginia Tech academic program
at the Virginia Tech Center for European Studies and Architecture
in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland, during three separate semesters.
In 1996, Professor Weisband introduced, “Nations and Nationalities:
Cultural Constructions of Collective Identity,” the first
undergraduate and core curricular offering officially sponsored
by the Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs.
Professor Weisband has served in various consultantships
and visiting scholarly capacities throughout his career. He
has been a project evaluator for the U.S. Agency for International
Development in connection with its Title IX program designed
to encourage capacity building in developing and newly industrializing
countries with respect to human rights and civic participation.
As a result, he worked in Kenya, Uganda, Turkey as well as
Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Professor Weisband has also
been invited to act as a Scholar-in-Residence in a program
sponsored by the Rene Cassin International Institute of Human
Rights, Faculty of Law and Political Science of the University
of Strasbourg, France.
Professor Weisband has been interviewed on National Public
Radio, NBC’s Today Show, on CBS National Radio, “Cross Talk,”
on the Canadian Broadcasting System, and other similar programs.
He regularly lectures abroad and in 1997 was invited by Khulamani,
a South African organization seeking compensation for the
victims of Apartheid, to conduct lectures in townships throughout
the Capetown area regarding human rights and workers rights.
He has been an editorial reviewer for a wide range of publishers
and professional organizations, including Oxford University
Press, St. Martin’s Press, Prentice-Hall, Longman & Son,
Westview Press, American Political Science Association, International
Studies Quarterly, the Peace Science Society, etc. He is actively
engaged in numerous disciplinary and professional organizations
and in 1997 was inducted into the Phi Beta Delta Honorary
Society for International Scholars.
LAURA ZANOTTI
Associate Professor
(Ph.D., Florida International University 2004).
Her research and teaching include critical political and
international relations theory, as well as international organization,
security, peacekeeping and democratization. She is currently
preparing a book that explores, through a Foucaultian framework,
United Nations peacekeeping in the context of the post-Cold
War international security regime. The main argument of that
work is that pro-democracy peacekeeping is an instance of
an international regime that aims at taming chaos through
disciplinary and regulatory mechanisms directed at reforming
the institutions of potentially disorderly states and at steering
their behaviour through multiple mechanisms of surveillance
and reward/punishment. In this regime, democratization becomes
the means for reducing the risk posed by disorderly states
and the progue actors they are believed to harbor by making
their processes of government more readable and codified and
making obscure borderlands visible and predictable. Other
aspects of Dr. Zanotti' s research regard the reform of the
United Nations, the changing understandings of the role of
the UN as a collective security organization and their implication
for state sovereignty, as well as the UN's new ?human security?
based approaches to crisis management and prevention. Zanotti
has published articles in Alternatives, International Peacekeeping,
as well as in the European University Working Papers Series.
She has also contributed a chapter on risk management and
natural disaster prevention to the Annuario IAI/ISPI, 2006
Edition (in Italian, with Raffaele Marchetti).
In 2005-2006 Laura has spent an academic year as a Jean Monnet
Fellow at the European University Institute in San Domenico
di Fiesole, Italy . Previously she received funding from the
Latin America and Caribbean Institute at Florida International
University , and the Mellons' Foundation. She has presented
numerous papers on the subject of her research at international
meetings, and has been frequently invited to lecture in Italy
and abroad on peacekeeping, democratization and the United
Nations reform. Prior to joining VT, Laura has worked for
about ten years at the United Nations, where she has served
both in administration and as a political advisor for Peacekeeping
Operations. She has spent several years in the field. She
was twice in Haiti , in 1995 and 1999. In 1999 she represented
the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in a ?Needs Assessment
Mission? deployed in Haiti by the United Nations Secretary
General to devise the shift of the UN mandate from peacekeeping
to peace building. More recently (2001-2003) she was in Croatia
where she performed the function of Deputy to the Head of
the United Nations Liaison Office in Zagreb .
Jennifer Hanratty
International Studies Undergraduate
Advisor and University Pre-Law Advisor
BA, International Studies, Virginia Tech, 2003
Jennifer Hanratty began her career at Virginia Tech in 2006
in the Registrar's Office and later moved to the College of
Engineering Academic Affairs office in 2007. She joined the
International Studies Department in May 2008. Jennifer serves
as the Undergraduate Advisor for the International Studies
program as well as one of the University Pre-Law Advisors.
Jennifer is here to answer any questions you may have concerning
the curriculum, graduation requirements, advising issues,
etc. If you need to contact Jennifer, please feel free to
email
her at or call her at 540-231-5874.
Email:
Jennifer Hanratty
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