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Peace and Conflict Studies Concentration

Program Director

  • Dr. Williams teaches courses on international relations, including Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and International Security; U.S. National Security; Women and War; Popular Culture and IR; and Religion and International Relations. In addition to her research that addresses the connection between international […]

Program Faculty

  • Ora Szekely

    Associate Professor, Political Science

    Ora Szekely’s research focuses on the foreign and domestic policies of nonstate armed groups in the Middle East, as well as the gendered dimensions of civil war. Her work is based on field research conducted across the region. Her most […]

  • Jude Fernando

    Associate Professor, Sustainability and Social Justice

    Jude Fernando is completing a book, Political Economy of NGOs: Modernizing Post-modernity, which examines the controversial social roles of micro-credit NGOs in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and their links to the state, based on his long-term fieldwork in the […]

  • Johanna Vollhardt

    Associate Professor, Psychology

    Dr. Vollhardt received a Ph.D. in Social Psychology (with a concentration in the Psychology of Peace and Violence) from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and joined Clark University in Fall 2009. She is affiliated with CGRAS, CRES, HGS, and Peace […]

Affiliate Faculty

  • Taner Akcam

    Senior Research Scholar, History

    Historian and sociologist Taner Akçam received his doctorate in 1995 from the University of Hanover, with a dissertation on The Turkish National Movement and the Armenian Genocide Against the Background of the Military Tribunals in Istanbul Between 1919 and 1922. Akçam […]

  • Michael Butler

    Associate Professor, Political Science

    Michael J. Butler is an Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science. In 2014-15, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Institute of International Studies, University of Wrocław. Butler specializes in international security, conflict management and […]

  • Prof. Derr received a B.A. from Seattle University in 1972 and a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 1976. He has been at Clark since that time. He is a research professor with the George Perkins Marsh Institute and with […]

  • Anita Fabos

    Professor, Sustainability and Social Justice

    Anita H. Fábos is an anthropologist who studies how people who experience displacement and forced migration think about and organize their mobile lives. She has lived, worked, and conducted research together with diasporic Sudanese Muslims and other forced migrants in […]

  • Thomas Kuehne

    Professor, History

    Director of the Strassler Family Center

    Thomas Kühne is Professor of History and the Strassler Chair in the Study of Holocaust History and the Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Currently he serves also as Director of Holocaust and […]

  • Doug Little

    Professor Emeritus, History

    Dr. Little received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1972, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in 1975 and 1978, respectively, from Cornell University. He has been at Clark since that time and is also affiliated with the program […]

  • Ken MacLean

    Professor, Sustainability and Social Justice

    Professor, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

    My research is interdisciplinary in nature reflecting my continued interest in the politics of knowledge production. With a geographic focus mainland Southeast Asia, I concentrate on a number of inter-related topics—from state-sponsored violence and forced migration to the politics of […]

  • Dr. 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 political science fiction. Her research interests lie mainly at the […]

  • Andrew Stewart

    Associate Professor, Psychology

    Andrew L. Stewart received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Social Psychology from the University of Connecticut and B.S. degrees in Psychology and Mathematics from Colorado State University. He has been at Clark since 2014. Professor Stewart is a social psychologist […]

  • James Cordova

    Professor, Psychology

    Department Chair, Psychology

    Dr. Córdova received a B.A. from the University of New Mexico in 1989 and a M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington at Seattle in 1992 and 1996, respectively. He has been at Clark since 2002. The goal of Dr. Córdova's […]

  • Jack Delehanty

    Assistant Professor, Sociology

    Jack Delehanty studies how moral frameworks, especially religion, provide cultural justifications for inequality in the U.S. and fuel movements to contest it. He has published research on religious conservatism’s changing effects on American national identity and belonging, the cultural dynamics […]

  • Wes DeMarco

    Teaching Professor, Philosophy

    Dr. DeMarco (Ph.D, Vanderbilt University 1991) has taught full time at Clark since 2007, serving as Lecturer since 2011 and Senior Lecturer since 2014. He has worked for three decades to develop a 'Neosocratic' philosophy that engages Western and Asian […]

  • Timothy Downs

    Professor, Sustainability and Social Justice

    Tim Downs is a specialist in environmental science and engineering with over 30 years field experience designing and managing collaborative projects in the UK, the United States, Latin America and Africa. His research focus is on how humans change the […]

  • Professor Michaels holds a B.A. from Barnard College (1975), and an M.A. (1976) and Ph.D. (1981) in Education (Language and Literacy) from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to coming to Clark in 1990, Michaels served as Director of the Literacies […]

  • Laurie Ross

    Professor, Sustainability and Social Justice

    Director, Sustainability and Social Justice

    Laurie Ross brings expertise in developing and supporting long-term community-university partnerships that address the social determinants of youth violence. The intractability of youth violence requires horizontal knowledge and strategy production (i.e. responses that are co-created by individuals and communities affected […]

  • Morgan Ruelle

    Assistant Professor, Sustainability and Social Justice

    Morgan Ruelle is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Science and Policy program in the Department of International Development, Community and Environment. He is interested in how biological and cultural diversity enable communities to anticipate and adapt to change. His […]

  • Frances Tanzer

    Assistant Professor, History

    Frances Tanzer is a historian of modern Jewish culture, the Holocaust, and Modern Europe. She is interested in writing histories of modern Europe that focus on the paradoxical but crucial roles of refugees and minorities in shaping the continent's identities […]

  • Ms. Tenenbaum received a B.A. from Antioch College and a Ph.D. from Brandeis University. She was the founding director of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies concentration and is also affiliated with Women's and Gender Studies, Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies, […]