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Political Science Faculty and Staff

Ilja A. Luciak

Professor and Department Chair
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 twenty-five 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 Austrian, British, Mexican, Nicaraguan, North American, Salvadoran and Swedish publications. He has worked as a consultant for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Women’s Fund (UNIFEM), the Office of the Special Advisor to the Secretary General on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women (OSAGI) and the Swedish International Development Authority (Sida). He 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. Professor Luciak has recently completed a multi-year study on "Gender Equality and Democratization in Central America and Cuba" for the European Commission. Based on this study he published After the Revolution: Gender and Democracy in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), which uses a gender lens to examine the transformation of the revolutionary Left from armed guerrilla movements into political parties. The second part of this research project was published by the University Press of Florida in 2007 and is entitled, Gender and Democracy in Cuba. Professor Luciak is currently working on the role of parliaments in conflict prevention and recovery, with a particular focus on the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security. .

Email: Ilja Luciak