SÉVERINE AUTESSERRE

Séverine Autesserre is an associate professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University. She works on civil wars, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian aid, specializing in international relations and African studies. Autesserre’s latest research project examines successful international contributions to local and bottom-up peacebuilding. Her 2014 article in International Peacekeeping presents some of the early ideas for this research.

Her book Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention (Cambridge University Press 2014) won the 2016 Best Book of the Year Award and the 2015 Yale H. Ferguson Award from the International Studies Association. Her fieldwork in Democratic Republic of Congo culminated in The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding (Cambridge University Press 2010), which won the 2012 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order and the 2011 Chadwick Alger Prize presented by the International Studies Association to the best book on international organizations and multilateralism. Research for this project has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, International Organization, the Review of African Political Economy, the African Studies Review, the African Security Review, International Peacekeeping, the Revista de Relaciones Internationales, and the Journal of Humanitarian Affairs. It was the topic of a recent TED Talk that has more than 720,000 views.

Autesserre’s work has won numerous other prizes, grants and fellowships, including two research awards from the United States Institute of Peace (2004–2005 and 2010–2012), two Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation research grants (2010 and 2011), a Presidential Research Award from Barnard College (2010), several grants from Columbia University (2010–2016), two Mellon Fellowships in Security and Humanitarian Action (2004–2006), the 2006 Best Graduate Student Paper award from the African Studies Association, and a Fulbright Fellowship (1999–2000).

Before becoming an academic, Autesserre worked for humanitarian organizations (including Doctors Without Borders and Doctors of the World) and development agencies in Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nicaragua, and India. She holds a post-doctorate from Yale University (2007), a PhD in political science from New York University (2006), and master’s degrees in international relations and political science from Columbia University (2000) and Sciences Po (France, 1999).

MATTHEW FUHRMANN

Matthew Fuhrmann is an associate professor of political science and Ray A. Rothrock `77 Fellow at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on international relations, nuclear proliferation, and armed conflict. He is the author of Atomic Assistance: How “Atoms for Peace” Programs Cause Nuclear Insecurity (Cornell University Press 2012) and the coauthor of Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge University Press 2016, with Todd S. Sechser).

Fuhrmann was also a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focused on international security and nuclear proliferation. Much of his current work centers on the causes and consequences of the nuclear energy renaissance. Some of his other research examines topics such as nuclear weapons and coercive threats, military strikes against nuclear facilities, radiological/nuclear terrorism, and regional nuclear weapons free zones.

Before joining Texas A&M University, Fuhrmann was an assistant professor of political science at the University of South Carolina. He was also an associate at the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard’s Kennedy School. From 2007 to 2008, he served as a research fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Fuhrmann was previously a research associate at the University of Georgia’s Center for International Trade and Security, where he specialized in strategic trade controls and prepared reports for various US government agencies on export control development in foreign countries.

His research has been published in some of the leading journals in the field, including International Security, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Conflict Management and Peace Science, and Foreign Policy Analysis, among other journals. He has also written opinion pieces for The Atlantic (online), The Christian Science Monitor, Slate, and USA Today. Fuhrmann holds an MS in international affairs from Georgia Tech and a PhD in political science from the University of Georgia.

ANNA GRZYMALA-BUSSE

Anna Grzymala-Busse is the Ronald and Eileen Weiser Professor, and director of the European and Eurasian Studies in the department of political science, University of Michigan. She received her PhD in 1999 from Harvard University. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics.

In her first book, Redeeming the Communist Past, she examined the paradox of the communist successor parties in East Central Europe. She discovered that although some parties were incompetent as authoritarian rulers of the communist party-state, several then succeeded as democratic competitors after the collapse of these communist regimes in 1989.

Rebuilding Leviathan, her second book project, investigated the role of political parties and party competition in the reconstruction of the post-communist state. The book explained that, unless checked by a robust competition, democratic governing parties simultaneously rebuilt the state and ensured their own survival by building in enormous discretion into new state institutions.

Grzymala-Busse’s most recent book project, Nations Under God, examines why some churches have been able to wield enormous policy influence while others have failed to do so, even in very religious countries. Where religious and national identities have historically fused, churches gained great moral authority, and subsequently covert and direct access to state institutions. It was this institutional access, rather than either partisan coalitions or electoral mobilization, that allowed some churches to become so powerful.

Grzymala-Busse’s other areas of interest include informal institutions, the impact of European Union membership on politics in newer member countries, and the role of temporality and causal mechanisms in social science explanations.

JENS HAINMUELLER

Jens Hainmueller is an associate professor in the department of political science at Stanford University. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is the faculty codirector of the Stanford Immigration Policy Lab.

His administrative appointments include faculty associate, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University; faculty fellow, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration, University College London; associate professor (by courtesy), Graduate School of Business, Stanford University; and associate professor (with tenure), department of political science, Stanford University. A highly recognized scholar and teacher, Hainmueller has received numerous awards, including a Bok Center Award for Distinguished Teaching (received twice), Harvard University; Senator Charles Sumner Prize, Harvard Faculty (2009); Gosnell Prize for Excellence in Political Methodology, Society of Political Methodology (2007); and multiple paper awards from the American Political Science Association and the Midwest Political Science Association.

Hainmueller’s research interests include statistical methods, political economy, and political behavior. His research has appeared in numerous leading journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Review of Economics and Statistics, Political Analysis, International Organization, Management Science, and the Journal of Statistical Software, and has received awards from the American Political Science Association, the Society of Political Methodology, and the Midwest Political Science Association.

Hainmueller received his PhD from Harvard University and also studied at the London School of Economics, Brown University, and the University of Tübingen. Before joining Stanford, he served on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

MARC LYNCH

Marc Lynch is professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and director of its Institute for Middle East Studies. His research focuses on the many dimensions of political communication and information technology in the Arab world. He has written three books, including State Interests and Public Spheres (Columbia University Press 1999), Voices of the New Arab Public (Columbia University Press 2006), and The Arab Uprising (PublicAffairs 2012), and is the editor of The Arab Uprisings Explained (Columbia University Press 2014). His research has explored topics such as Arab public opinion, the war in Iraq, Islamist movements, and the Arab uprisings. He is currently engaged in a large-scale mixed-method study of the role of the Internet on the Arab uprisings and the war in Syria.

Lynch received his PhD from Cornell University in 1997, and taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and Williams College before joining George Washington University. In 2009, he founded the Project on Middle East Political Science, an international network supporting scholars in the subfield supported by the Carnegie Corporation, the SSRC, and the Luce Foundation. He founded and edited the Middle East Channel for Foreign Policy magazine from 2010 to 2014, and is now a contributing editor at the Monkey Cage blog at the Washington Post. He is also the codirector of the “Blogs and Bullets” project for USIP and an adjunct scholar at the Center for a New American Security. Within APSA, he served on the Council 2014–2016, he served on the 2013 APSA Presidential Ad Hoc Committee on Publications, and he is a member of the Perspectives on Politics editorial board.

MARK FATHI MASSOUD

Mark Fathi Massoud is an associate professor of politics and legal studies, University of California, Santa Cruz. Massoud’s research focuses on the institutionalization of law and human rights in conflict settings and authoritarian states, and on Islamic law and society. He holds JD and PhD degrees from University of California, Berkeley.

His book, Law’s Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan (Cambridge University Press) received the Honorable Mention Award for the APSA C. Herman Pritchett Prize for best book in law and courts, and the Law and Society Association Herbert Jacob Book Prize. The book explores how colonial administrators, post-colonial state leaders, and humanitarian aid groups use law to establish social, moral, political, and economic order. But the process toward legitimacy, as Massoud shows, is often achieved through illegitimate means.

Massoud has received multiple fellowships and grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015), Mellon New Directions Fellowship (2015–2018), ACLS Fellowship (2015–2016), Harvard Law School IGLP Santander-Doha Research Grant (2014–2015), and a Hellman Fellowship (2012–2013) as well as support from the University of California Humanities Research Institute (2013–2015) and the University of California Center for New Racial Studies (2013–2014).

His awards include the Law and Society Association 50th Anniversary Junior Scholars Essay Winner (2014), the Canadian Association of Law Teachers Scholarly Paper Award (2012), the American Political Science Association Corwin Award for best dissertation in public law (2009), and the Law and Society Association Dissertation Prize (2009).

VESLA MAE WEAVER

Vesla Mae Weaver joined the faculty at Yale University in African American Studies in 2012 and is the founding director of the Institute for Social and Policy Studies Center for the Study of Inequality (I-CSI). Weaver is broadly interested in understanding racial inequality in the United States, how state policies shape citizenship, and the political causes and consequences of the growth of the criminal justice system in the United States.

Her newest book with Amy Lerman, Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control, is concerned with the effects of increasing punishment and surveillance in America on democratic inclusion, particularly for the black urban poor. She received the APSA 2014 Best Book in Urban Politics for Arresting Citizenship and the Russell Sage Foundation award. She is also the author of Frontlash: Civil Rights, the Carceral State, and the Transformation of American Politics, which uncovers a connection between the movement for civil rights and the development of punitive criminal justice. Weaver is also the coauthor of Creating a New Racial Order, which explores how multiracialism, immigration, the genomics revolution, and generational changes are reshaping the racial order in the United States (with Jennifer Hochschild and Traci Burch).

Weaver’s research has been supported by fellowships from the Russell Sage Foundation, National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Brookings Institution. She currently serves on the Harvard/NIJ Executive Session on Community Corrections, the APSA task force report The Double Bind: Racial and Class Inequalities in the Americas (2016), the Center for Community Change’s Good Jobs for All initiative, and the Yale Faculty Senate. She is at work on a new project on the politics of intra-racial class inequality with Jennifer Hochschild and another that will map patterns of citizenship and governance across cities and neighborhoods called the Faces of American Democracy.