Faculty Research

Professor Boatright teaches courses on American political behavior, political parties, campaigns and elections, interest groups, political participation, and political theory. His research focuses on the effects of campaign and election laws on the behavior of politicians and interest groups, with a particular focus on primary elections and campaign finance laws and practices.

He is research network director at the National Institute for Civil Discourse, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving the quality of political discourse in U.S. politics.

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Professor Posner teaches courses on Latin American politics, U.S.-Latin American relations, comparative environmental politics, and democratic theory. His current research focuses on labor politics, the politics of social welfare resource distribution, the New Left, and populism in Latin America, with specific focus on Chile, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

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Professor Scoggins teaches courses on Chinese politics, research methods, comparative politics, and social movements. Her research interests include policing, protest management, bureaucratic politics, rights consciousness, and authoritarian control in reform-era China.

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Professor Silber Mohamed teaches courses on women and politics, immigration politics, research methods, American politics, Latino politics in the U.S., and the politics of food and drink. Her research interests center around Latino politics, immigration policy, immigrant socialization and participation, and identity politics in the U.S, with a particular focus on the intersection of race, class, and gender.

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Professor Sperling teaches a variety of courses in comparative politics, including Russian politics; revolution and political violence; mass murder and genocide under communism; transitions to democracy; globalization and democracy; and introduction to women’s and gender studies. Her research interests include globalization and accountability, social movements, gender politics, patriotism and militarism, and state-building in the post-communist region.

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Professor Szekely teaches courses on comparative politics, including introduction to comparative politics; the politics of the Middle East; the politics of ethnicity and identity; the Arab-Israeli conflict; and capstone seminars on civil war and refugees. Her research focuses on nonstate military actors in the developing world, particularly in the Middle East. Her current research is focused on the Syrian civil war, and in particular the role of female combatants. She has conducted field research in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, Syria, and Turkey.

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Professor Williams teaches courses on international relations, including an introduction to international relations; U.S. foreign policy and national security; peace and war; gender, war and peace; religion and international relations; and the international relations of sports. Her primary research addresses the connection between international relations theory, nationalism and ethnic conflict, and gender.

Williams is currently engaged in a research project on women, gender, and the U.S. national security and foreign policy establishment.

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