Institute Welcomes Nine New Faculty Fellows

Nine Notre Dame faculty have been appointed fellows of the Kroc Institute during the spring semester of 2003. Fellows teach peace studies and cross-listed courses, conduct research in conjunction with Institute research initiatives, and serve on Institute committees. Fellows are appointed by the provost of the University for three year terms. These new appointments give greater interdisciplinary diversity and depth to the Kroc Institute’s educational and research programs and strengthen opportunities for collaboration with departments and other institutes at Notre Dame. The new appointees are:

Paul Cobb (Assistant Professor, History) is a social and cultural historian of the pre-modern Middle East. By definition, his teaching and research are wide-ranging, with a special interest in medieval Muslim- Christian-Jewish relations. Cobb received a Ph.D. in Islamic history from the University of Chicago in 1997. He is the author of White Banners: Contention in ‘Abbasid Syria (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), which examines the sources of sociopolitical unrest in Syria Palestine in the early Middle Ages, and he is currently at work on a second book about a Muslim family in the age of the Crusades.

Kathleen Collins (Assistant Professor, Political Science) specializes in the politics of the former Soviet Union, especially of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Collins also studies the politics of ethnic and Islamic identities, and the role that ethnicity and Islam play in civil conflict. She has been conducting extensive research in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Russia. Her Ph.D. dissertation, which she completed at Stanford in 2000, was awarded the Seymour Martin Lipset Prize for the Best Comparative Politics Dissertation from the Society of Comparative Research in 1999-2000. Collins is finishing a book manuscript based on her dissertation, entitled Clan Politics and Regime Transformation in Central Asia.

Barbara Connolly (Assistant Professor, Political Science) studies international institutions and international environmental politics. After completing her Ph.D. in Political Science at Berkeley in 1997, Connolly was appointed a postdoctoral fellow (1997-98) and then a faculty fellow for four years at the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s program in Global Environmental Assessment and Public Policy at Harvard University. There she conducted extensive research on the role of scientific assessment in international environmental policymaking. Connolly has published several chapters and articles, and was author or co-author of three chapters in Institutions for Environmental Aid: Pitfalls and Promise, edited by Robert O. Keohane and Marc A. Levy (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1996). She is currently completing a book manuscript, Organizational Choice for International Cooperation: East-West European Cooperation on Regional Environmental Problem.

Frances Hagopian (Associate Professor, Political Science) is the Michael P. Grace II Chair in Latin American Studies. She studies the comparative politics of Latin America, with emphasis on democratization and the political economy of economic reform in Brazil and the Southern Cone. Hagopian is the author of Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 1996), which was named a Choice outstanding book in Comparative Politics. Her current research focuses on economic liberalization and political representation in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. Hagopian received her Ph.D. from MIT in 1986.

Paul V. Kollman, C.S.C. (Assistant Professor, History) has special interests in African Christianity and mission history. He has taught at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and the Philosophy Centre in Jinja, Uganda. Kollman has held appointments at Notre Dame’s Erasmus Institute and as a Lilly Fellow for Theological Education at the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in 2001. He is also president of the Midwest Fellowship of Professors of Mission and book review editor for the journal Mission Studies. Kollman is currently preparing a manuscript on the evangelization of slaves in 19th-century eastern Africa.

Keir A. Lieber (Assistant Professor, Political Science) specializes in international relations theory, international conflict and security, and U.S. foreign policy. He is author of “ Grasping the Technological Peace: The Offense-Defense Balance and International Security,” in the journal International Security (Summer 2000). Leiber is currently completing a book manuscript, Technology and the Prospects for Peace, which explores the relationship between technological change and military conflict while also working on an article examining U.S. national missile defense and a book-length manuscript analyzing U.S. nuclear policy during and after the Cold War. Lieber previously worked at the Henry L. Stimson Center, where his research focused on regional confidence-building measures and the control of chemical and nuclear arms proliferation. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2000.

Emily Osborn (Assistant Professor, History) examines colonial rule and its legacies in French West Africa. She is interested in the efforts made by French colonizers to import and impose gender codes on West African societies through the bureaucracy of the colonial state. Osborn’s current work focuses on a small Islamic state that is present day Guinea-Conakry, West Africa, and its incorporation into the French colonial order. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford in 2000.

 

Richard B. Pierce (Assistant Professor, History) specializes in African American, urban, and Civil Rights history, with a particular focus on social and political protest in urban environments. In July, 2002, he was appointed Associate Director of African and African American Studies at Notre Dame, where he was the primary architect of the Erskine A. Peters Dissertation Fellowship Program. Pierce completed a Ph.D. at Indiana University in 1996. He has received several fellowships and awards, including a Ford-funded Fellowship at the Center for African American Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE) and Indiana’s Delegate to Capital Hill (1998). As a member of the Urban Research and Development Initiative at Notre Dame, he is the lead researcher on a project that documents the impact of de-industrialization on minority communities. Currently, Pierce is completing a book on African American protest in Indianapolis.

Maura A. Ryan (Associate Professor, Christian Ethics) is Associate Provost at Notre Dame. Ryan’s primary interests are in the areas of bioethics and health policy, feminist ethics, and fundamental moral theology. She co-edited a book on global stewardship with Todd David Whitmore in 1997 and her Ethics and Economics of Assisted Reproduction: The Cost of Longing was published by Georgetown Press in 2001. She is on the Board of Directors for the Society of Christian Ethics and the editorial boards of the Religious Studies Review and Ethics and Behavior. Currently she is working on several projects, including the challenge of assisted suicide for feminist ethics, and the relationship between individual moral agency and the common good. She completed a Ph.D. at Yale University in 1993.

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