New Faculty for 2007-8:

The Political Science Department is pleased to announce the addition of two new faculty members.   We are excited to they have agreed to join our program, and look forward to their presence in the upcoming years.




Olga Bogatyrenko will hold the title of Assistant Professor, and will teach international relations and security.  She has just earned her Ph.D. in Political Scinece from the University of Califonia at Davis.  She has been working in Washington D.C. coordinating the Washington Semester program for the University of California system.






In her own words:

Substantively, I specialize in international relations and security studies. I am also interested in methodology and research design and post-Soviet studies. My research focuses on groups that use violence to achieve their goals, which includes terrorism, revolutions, insurgency and guerrilla warfare in the context of their interactions with great powers. Groups that use asymmetric tactics, that are characterized by autonomous decision-making authority and geographic dispersion conducive to their ability to evade the police and the military, and that have access to all necessary human and material resources are always more resilient and operationally effective than groups that do not have even one of the above attributes. I find that whereas such groups may undermine great powers’ power, sometimes their behavior is self-defeating and results in dramatic build ups of their target’s power. Counter-intuitively, I find that in most cases the strategy of ignoring violent groups (rather than mobilizing resources to address them) does not have any far-reaching negative consequences for great powers. My teaching interests intersect with my research interests and I teach courses on international relations and security, terrorism, American Foreign Policy, research design, history of great powers and on a number of advanced topics in IR. I also enjoy teaching courses on research design and methods. On a personal note, I am originally from Ukraine and I travel to Ukraine annually to visit family and friends. I am an avid photographer, cat lover, tennis player, skier and Wizards fan.


Alex Caviedes will hold the title of Assistant Professor, and will teach comparative politics and political economy begining the next academic year.  He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2006, and is teaching this year as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.





In his own words:

My research interests are in comparative political economy and international political economy generally, as well as multi-level governance and international law. I teach courses on comparative politics, Western European politics, the EU, immigration, and comparative capitalisms (and have also taught international law and international organization). My research deals with labor migration policy in W. European countries, where I examine the ability of trade unions and empoyers' associations to determine policies. In-depth case study analysis of Germany, the UK, Austria and the Netherlands has shown that labor migration is moving away from national models toward a greater convergence in policies across countries in the same sectors. Further research interests deal with whether the European Union will be able to develop a comprehensive common immigration policy, a subject on which I have published in the Journal of European Public Policy. My studies, research and family ties have led to longer stays in Germany and Italy, but I feel at home in most any European setting. I am a passionate fan and player of soccer, and I enjoy strumming on my guitar when I get the chance.