Faculty Facts: Fletcher professors’ out-of-classroom professional activities
Members of Fletcher’s faculty are first-and-foremost educators. They teach, advise students on Capstone Projects and PhD dissertations, provide governance for the School, organize conferences, and do all the other activities that are associated with being a professor. But it’s also typical for professors to conduct research, write, publish, and maintain associations with professional groups. While they might teach the same classes for several years in a row, their research and professional activities can change yearly. As I noted yesterday, I asked the faculty to provide a brief summary of what they are working on and I’ll be sharing their summaries today and weekly until I have published them all. I’ll also include videos, such as interviews with Dean Stavridis, or other materials you may want to check out, after reading the summaries.
Karen Jacobsen, Henry J. Leir Professor in Global Migration
My current main research is the Refugees in Towns project, which supports towns and urban neighborhoods in becoming immigrant- and refugee-friendly spaces that take full advantage of the benefits brought by refugees, while finding ways to manage the inevitable and long-term challenges of immigrant integration.
Chris Miller, Assistant Professor of International History
My current research examines the past and future of Russian power projection in Asia. After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia began what many in Moscow describe as a “turn to the east” — an effort to deepen relations with China and expand Russia’s role in Asia. Yet this is not the first time Russia has pivoted toward Asia. The book I am writing studies the history of Russia’s Asian pivots from the early 1800s, when Russia first established a major foothold on the Pacific Ocean, through the present, to understand the roots of the Kremlin’s current effort to bolster its role in Asia.
Professor Miller’s website. He previously wrote a Faculty Spotlight post. In the video below, he sits down with Dean Stavridis to discuss U.S. cybersecurity.
Larry Krohn, Adjunct Professor of International Economics
I’m finishing a book, under contract with University of Toronto Press, on the economics of Latin America (an 18-nation universe). It deals with policy issues experienced over roughly the last thirty years (from the famous Washington Consensus). This was my area of specialization when I worked as an economist in financial services (1983-2008) and was what first brought me to Fletcher in 2005. The work is organized around issues, macro and structural, using country experiences as case studies. Not surprisingly, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina are cited most often. Many of the issues I deal with are not familiar to students exposed only to the usual micro-cum-macro principles courses taken in nations deemed of high income, and thus with an orientation to the problems of that economic stratum — decidedly not that of Latin America in the period under study. So I ensure that the basic theoretical notions and vocabulary of each subject area are conveyed to the reader before tackling the strictly Latin manifestations of the problem.
Professor Krohn’s profile. He previously wrote a Faculty Spotlight post.
Ian Johnstone, Professor of International Law
I am currently engaged in three strands of research. The first is the most theoretical. It extends the work I have done on legal interpretive communities by situating it in the growing body of literature in international relations on “communities of practice.” A question I am exploring is whether a global interpretive community ever exists in a given issue area (for example on the use of force in international law), or whether it makes more sense to speak of multiple interpretive communities from different parts of the world that may or may not intersect.
The second strand of research is on peacekeeping and international law. I am editing a volume that pulls together the seminal writings on the topic, with an introductory essay that will serve as both a literature review and analysis of the current state of the law.
The third strand, which is more policy-oriented, considers various ways in which global health and global security intersect. Within that framework, I am currently engaged in research on the practice of inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations that seeks to address the stigmatization of forcibly displaced persons as carriers of infectious disease.
On a separate track, the new Center for International Law and Governance (which I co-direct with Professor Joel Trachtman) is holding an interdisciplinary conference on cyber-security in September 2018. A series of panels will consider whether international legal mechanisms can and should be developed to address politically-motivated cyber attacks on civilian institutions and infrastructure. Our plan is to engage policy-makers on the topic with the goal of having a practical impact, as well to produce an edited volume that will contribute to the scholarly literature.