Political Science Faculty and Staff
Laura Sjoberg
Assistant Professor
Ph.D. University of Southern California, 2004; JD, Boston College Law School, 2007
Ph.D. University of Southern California, 2004; JD, Boston College Law School, 2007
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 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. She is the recipient of the Women in Politics Research Section Best Paper for APSA 2006, the University of Southern California Best Dissertation of 2004 Award, the Center for International Studies Best Paper Prize (2003), and the International Studies Association-West Best Paper Prize (2002)
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 21 st 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 21 st 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 , Choice, 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.
Email: Laura Sjoberg