Graduate Mentoring and Teaching
Mentoring
I focus a considerable amount of time and energy on training and mentoring PhD students here at UF. Since I began here in 2004, I have chaired or currently chair 14 dissertation committees and have served or serve on 24 more. My former students now hold faculty appointments at Iowa State, Millsaps, Furman, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, John Jay-CUNY, the University of Alabama, Morehouse, Austin College, Missouri State, and work in an array of analytic and foreign affairs professions outside the academy.
My PhD students work in a wide range of areas, and have completed or are currently conducting research for dissertations on:
and a range of other topics. Like me, they employ a wide array of methodological approaches, often combining in-depth field work using one or more foreign languages with broad comparative analysis. They have won research grants and fellowships from the US Department of Education's Fulbright and Boren programs, the Social Science Research Council, the Smith-Richardson Foundation and from the American Council of Learned Societies.
If you are considering pursuing a PhD in political science and in chasing down the answers to questions like these, and if the prospect of joining a wide-ranging and hardworking cohort of PhD students appeals to you, feel free to contact me.
Teaching
I teach graduate courses in the comparative politics and methods fields.
I regularly teach two graduate-level seminars in comparative politics: Ethnicity and Nationalism and Civil Wars. I taught the former in fall 2020, and taught the latter in spring 2022. In fall 2022, I will offer Southeast Asian Politics.
In the methods field, I teach Conduct of Inquiry every other year for the first-year cohorts. In this seminar I focus heavily on the development of research questions, deep exploration of the logic of different modes of empirical inquiry and explanation, and subsequently how to construct the most appropriate research designs to answer particular questions.
I have also taught focused seminars on Comparative Historical Analysis.
Mentoring
I focus a considerable amount of time and energy on training and mentoring PhD students here at UF. Since I began here in 2004, I have chaired or currently chair 14 dissertation committees and have served or serve on 24 more. My former students now hold faculty appointments at Iowa State, Millsaps, Furman, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, John Jay-CUNY, the University of Alabama, Morehouse, Austin College, Missouri State, and work in an array of analytic and foreign affairs professions outside the academy.
My PhD students work in a wide range of areas, and have completed or are currently conducting research for dissertations on:
- Why states offer concessions to some separatist movements but respond to others with coercive force
- Why strong indigenous rights organizations have emerged in some Latin American countries but not in others
- The impact of colonial legacies on democratic durability in former British colonies
- Why nation-building efforts fail in some post-colonial states but succeed in others
- The role of national identity in shaping environmental governance
- How formerly dominant ethnic minorities mobilize in post-minority rule settings
- Why armies relinquish their business enterprises after some democratic transitions and refuse to following others
- Why secessionist violence breaks out in some contexts but not in others
- The conditions under which democratic politics can encourage inter-ethnic peace;
and a range of other topics. Like me, they employ a wide array of methodological approaches, often combining in-depth field work using one or more foreign languages with broad comparative analysis. They have won research grants and fellowships from the US Department of Education's Fulbright and Boren programs, the Social Science Research Council, the Smith-Richardson Foundation and from the American Council of Learned Societies.
If you are considering pursuing a PhD in political science and in chasing down the answers to questions like these, and if the prospect of joining a wide-ranging and hardworking cohort of PhD students appeals to you, feel free to contact me.
Teaching
I teach graduate courses in the comparative politics and methods fields.
I regularly teach two graduate-level seminars in comparative politics: Ethnicity and Nationalism and Civil Wars. I taught the former in fall 2020, and taught the latter in spring 2022. In fall 2022, I will offer Southeast Asian Politics.
In the methods field, I teach Conduct of Inquiry every other year for the first-year cohorts. In this seminar I focus heavily on the development of research questions, deep exploration of the logic of different modes of empirical inquiry and explanation, and subsequently how to construct the most appropriate research designs to answer particular questions.
I have also taught focused seminars on Comparative Historical Analysis.