Faculty and Adjunct News

Professor Regina S. Axelrod gave a lecture, “Agenda Setting,” at the Faculty of International Stud-ies, University of Higher Econom-ics, Prague, on March 19, 2014. She also presented the paper, “The Czech Nuclear Renaissance” Inter-national Studies Association, in To-ronto on March 26, 2014. The 4th edition of her book, The Global En-vironment: Institutions, Law, and Policy (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly), which was co-edited by Stacy D. VanDeveer (Congressional Quarterly) 2014. Professor Axelrod’s chapters are, “Environmental Policy Making and Global Leadership in the European Union” pp. 157-186 and “Democracy and the Global Nucle-ar Renaissance: From the Czech Republic to Fukashima,” pp. 305-329.

Professor Margaret Gray has been giving talks about her new book Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic (University of California Press). She has spoken at Hofstra University, Columbia University, and Vassar College. She will also take part in the Brooklyn Food Book Fair. In addition, Professor Gray will be making presentations this semester at three conferences: The Latin American Studies Association, The Labor and Employment Relations Association, and the Agriculture and Human Values Conference. Professor Gray will be on sabbatical for the 2014-2015 academic year and is looking forward to working on her next research project on labor trafficking in New York State, but she will certainly miss her students!

Professor Katie Laatikainen During spring 2014, Professor Laatikainen continued to edit the two-volume Sage Handbook on European Foreign Policy (forthcoming 2015), for which she also wrote the chapter, “The EU and the United Nations.” She also worked on a book chapter, ‘The EU Delegation at the UN in New York’ for a new edit-ed volume by David Spence and Josef Batora, The European Un-ion’s External Action: Changing the Face of European Diplomacy, which will be published by Pal-grave in 2015. She attended the International Studies Association conference in Toronto, Canada in March 2014, where she presented her paper ‘Conceptualizing Groups and Group Politics at the UN’ on the panel Group Dynamics in Multi-lateral Politics: Conceptualizing regional arrangements and issue-coalitions in the UN General Assembly. She also was asked to participate on the ISA Roundtable “The Spaces and Places of Multilateralism in To-day’s World,” where she discussed the divergence of EU and UN multilateralism.

Professor Traci Levy is on sabbatical during the spring 2014 semester. She has been researching how political rhetoric has increasingly acknowledged the important role that the families of U.S. military personnel play in recruitment, readiness, retention, and morale. This rhetoric has been accompanied by a policy shift—a move toward benefits that exhibit a public ethic of care through robust and extensive military family supports. In April, Prof. Levy presents this research on a panel at the Western Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting in Seattle.

Professor Danielle Zach continued to develop her research on diasporas and armed conflict. She is collaborating with New York University’s Glucksman Ireland House to advance its oral history project on Irish America, particularly with respect to her interest in transnational activism across the Atlantic during the Northern Ireland Troubles. Over the past few months, she has twice given media interviews regarding the ongoing civil war in Syria, and her commentary has appeared in Newsday. She recently presented a paper on international cooperation concerning Somali piracy—with attention to the role of UN bodies and agencies in countering maritime crime off the Horn of Africa—at the 2014 International Studies Association Conference in Toronto.