Featured Student News from our 2017 department newsletter, Homo Politicus. Access the newsletter archive here.

Bradley Young (level II) is our Political Science M.A. Writing Fellow for the 2017-2018 academic year, and will assist students in transitioning from undergraduate- to graduate-level writing. He will offer an orientation and introduction at the beginning of each semester, and return for mid-semester and finals support.

Mercedes Wilby’s (level I) blog post, “‘Bathroom Bills’ Don’t Take Into Account That Gender Isn’t Always Clear Cut” was published by United States Politics and Policy, the LSE US Centre’s daily blog on American Politics and policy. 

Tom Waters (level III) presented on the history of New York’s housing movement at a conference at New York Law School and on the city’s community boards at a graduate workshop at the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Rosa Squillacote (level I) published an article in Portside on police unions, officers’ humanity, and the importance of recognizing officers as workers in the process of abolishing carceral oppression.

Merrill Sovner (level III) published two blog articles on philanthropy and human rights for the Human Rights Funders Network. 

Sally Sharif (level I) held a consultancy position at the Social Science Research Council, composing a critical literature review on the UN Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) programs for the project “Return, Responsibility, and Reintegration in Central Africa.” She received a scholarship from the Network for the Advancement of Social and Political Studies to do the Young Investigator Training Program in Political Studies and attend the Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models summer program. She also received the 2017 Center for Latin American, Caribbean & Latino Studies Travel Fellowship for her field research on FARC reintegration in Colombia. 

Heidi Andrea Rhodes (level I)  presented her paper, “The Blood that has Dried in the Codes: Sovereignty, Right, and the (Im)possibilities of Freedom,” at the “Diverse Unfreedoms and their Ghosts” Conference at Rutgers University, March 2017. 

Tyler Olsen (M.A.) was awarded a ten-month Fulbright grant to travel to Brazil, where he will study the local participatory assemblies that have contributed to various state-level Participatory Budgeting processes over the past two decades. 

Elizabeth Newcomer (level II) was the graduate student host of the Methods Café at the 2017 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in San Francisco, CA.

Kamran Moshref (level I) attended the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, an intensive, interdisciplinary 6-week seminar on critical thought, exploring debates in and across literary studies, political theory, history, philosophy, art, and anthropology.  He received funding to attend from the Graduate Center’s Doctoral Student Research Grant, and from Cornell University.

David Monda (level I) had three op-ed pieces published in the Daily Nation, Kenya’s largest newspaper, on “Tough choices for Raila as case set to begin at Supreme Court,” “What Trump’s immigration bill means for Kenyans,” and “Five foreign policy challenges for Kenya after election.” He also published a piece in the European Policy Network’s Journal Politheor, “Reserved seats in Parliament hurt rather than help Kenyan female candidates.”

Nick Micinski (level III) published a chapter “Dual Citizenship and Youth Identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” in Changing Youth Values in Southeast Europe: Beyond Ethnicity, Tamara Pavasovic Trošt and Danilo Mandić, eds. (Routledge, 2018) co-authored with Jasmin Hasić. Micinski was also coordinator for the Project on Peacebuilding, a week-long course on the history, context, and changing politics of peacebuilding, which hosted 15 students in Prijedor, Bosnia. The Project on Peacebuilding is partnered with the EU Studies Center at the Ralph Bunche Institute.

Chris Michael (level III) was hired as Director of Employee Ownership for the City of Newark’s main economic development agency, the Newark Community Economic Development Corporation, implementing a major new initiative of Mayor Ras Baraka.

Elena Cohen (level III) was elected President of the National Lawyers Guild in August. The NLG is “the nation’s oldest and largest progressive bar association, whose mission is to use law for the people, uniting lawyers, law students, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers to function as an effective force in the service of the people by valuing human rights over property interests.”

Harry Blain (level I) published “’Urban Governance Innovations in Rio de Janeiro,” in the LSE Cities’ New Urban Governance essay series, and “What Happened To the Arms Trade Treaty?” in Foreign Policy in Focus, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies. Blain also published three articles for Open Democracy: “NATO expansion in the Balkans: a dangerous gamble” with Robert Benson, “Can there be a progressive patriotism?”, and “Gentrifier heal thyself?” 

B Lee Aultman (level III) turned a chapter from their dissertation into a peer-reviewed article, “Reading the Signs: Trans Life, Memory, and a Redemptive Critique of History,” in Politics, Groups, and Identities as a part of a symposium they co-organized for the journal’s “Dialogues” section entitled “Transing Political Science.” 

Osha Smith-Gittelman (level II) presented his paper on what publicly disseminated claims by nonstate armed groups (e.g., cartels, gangs, and militias) reveal about the role of violence in regulating illicit activity in Mexico at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in San Francisco, CA. 

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