UChicago Committee on International Relations Fall 2018 Newsletter No Images? Click here Associate Professor of Political Science Paul Staniland is Faculty Chair of CIR. He is a 2004 graduate of the College, holds a PhD from MIT (2010), and co-directs the Program on Political Violence and the Program on International Security Policy. Paul is the author of the award-winning book Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse (Cornell, 2014) and publishes widely on civil war, political violence, and international security. Would you like to be featured in our biannual newsletter? Send an email to Matthias Staisch, CIR’s Director of Alumni Relations. Care to share your own good news with CIR’s worldwide network of alums? Let us know! Dear CIR Alumni: We are excited to have started another year. This cohort is CIR’s largest ever, at 70 students. They hail from 17 countries and 59 undergraduate institutions, bringing a wide range of experiences and backgrounds to the program. To maintain a high level of quality, we have increased our academic staff and internship funding, and benefited from an expansion of career services within the Division of the Social Sciences. The core intellectual work of the program continues as always: CIR students are actively engaged in courses across the university and workshops like the new Workshop on International Politics, while also taking full advantage of campus resources like the Institute of Politics. CIR-affiliated faculty have recently published a wide variety of fascinating books, on topics as different as the use of secrecy in war and postcolonial political thought about international relations. Off campus, we are looking forward to another student trip to India in collaboration with the UChicago Delhi Center. This year’s spring break trip adds Mumbai to our standard itinerary in Delhi. We hope to continue, and ideally expand, these global trips in the years to come. Matthias Staisch and I will be coming to Washington, DC to connect with the CIR community in the area on April 15 – see more below. CIR participated in Alumni Weekend this past June. In cooperation with the Women in International Affairs student group, CIR hosted a debate between Assistant Professors of Political Science Austin Carson and Paul Poast about the meaning of Donald Trump’s foreign policy. The audience overflowed beyond capacity, showing the high level of interest in international relations among the campus and alumni community. You can watch the full debate here. We are planning to participate again in the 2019 Alumni Weekend and would love to see you then. During Alumni Weekend, Rhea Mahanta (MA ’18) received the President’s Volunteer Service Award for her extensive work around campus this past year. This is a major honor, reflecting Rhea’s deep involvement in the UChicago community. We celebrated with our graduates at Convocation in June and the Social Sciences Summer Degree Celebration in August. At the August event, CIR alum Scott Sigmund Gartner (MA ’87) offered insightful reflections on his intellectual evolution and career path to gathered graduates and their families. Faculty Spotlight: Susan Stokes Faculty in the News: John Mearsheimer Alumni Spotlight: Alya Adamany
Woods Alumni in the News: Alex Kruzel Recent Graduates Transition into Careers of Excellence CIR offers unusually specialized advising for students aiming to pursue academic careers. This fall, recent graduates started PhD programs at Princeton, MIT, Wisconsin, UChicago, and USC. We sent three students to PhD programs at Berkeley alone - one each in Political Science, Anthropology, and Ethnomusicology. Students in the program had remarkable success in applying for Boren Fellowships to study abroad. Of the six total Boren awardees across the entire university, three were CIR students, and two of these accepted the scholarship. Lauren Baker is studying Portuguese while learning about environmental development in Mozambique. Christopher di Trolio is studying Portuguese while learning about human rights issues in Brazil. Connect with Lauren and Christopher here and here. Mentor Current Students and Recent Graduates Upcoming Director’s Lecture in Washington, D.C. Monday, April 15, 2019: Join us for a Faculty Lecture and Reception with Professor Paul Staniland, CIR Faculty Director and Associate Professor of Political Science, and CIR Senior Lecturer Matthias Staisch. This event will be a great opportunity to connect with the CIR community in D.C., meet prospective students, and catch up with faculty from the program. Sincerely, Paul Staniland |