The School of Public Policy is pleased to welcome two new members of our faculty.

Pamela R. Bennett is an associate professor in the Education Policy track. She investigates racial, ethnic, and nativity differences in post-secondary educational outcomes, the consequences of higher education policy on college outcomes, and the consequences of racial residential segregation. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the American Sociological Association, and the Poverty and Race Research Action Council. Prior to joining the School of Public Policy, Dr. Bennett was an associate professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She spent 2012-2013 as a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, where she worked on an upcoming book about parenting and schooling in diverse families. This fall, she is teaching PUBL 610, Special Topics—Issues in Higher Education Policy.

Dr. Bennett received a B.A. and M.A. in Sociology from Louisiana State University, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan (pbennett@umbc.edu).

Jane Arnold Lincove joins the faculty in the UMBC School of Public Policy as an associate professor in the Education Policy track. Her research focuses on the implementation and effects of market-based policy in public education, including teacher compensation, and the equity effects on low-income families, minorities, and girls. She has received funding for her research from the Spencer Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Texas Education Agency. Prior to joining the School of Public Policy, Dr. Lincove was a research assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Tulane University, and associate director of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans. Dr. Lincove is teaching PUBL 604, Statistical Analysis, in fall 2016. 

Dr. Lincove received a B.S. from Northwestern University, a Master of Public Policy from the University of California at Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in Public Administration from the University of Southern California (jlincove@umbc.edu).

The Political Science Department is accepting applications to the the 68th Annual Student Conference on U.S. Affairs (SCUSA) at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. This is an excellent opportunity to get involved in international and security debates with a large number of students and experts from around the country.

Every year, the Department sends two students to represent UMBC at this conference. Past participants have found the conference to be extremely rewarding. The Department covers registration fees and transportation to West Point, while the conference organizers provide room and board while there. If you are interested, please send a brief (one paragraph) letter of interest, including why you would like to go, what makes you qualified to represent the Department and your GPA to: Dr. Brian Grodsky,bgrodsky@umbc.edu. All applications must be received by September 19. 

For more information, see below. 

On behalf of Colonel Suzanne Nielsen, the head of the Department of Social Sciences, I would like to extend an invitation to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, to send two student delegates to participate in the 68th Annual Student Conference on U.S. Affairs (SCUSA), hosted by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. The conference meets from November 9th through November 12th, 2016.  West Point hosts SCUSA every fall, and it is the oldest and largest undergraduate conference of its type in the world. Approximately 200 undergraduate students from over 100 colleges and universities around the world attend SCUSA. Throughout the conference, the student delegates and cadets debate and formulate policy recommendations that realistically model American strategic responses to significant national and global challenges. The highlights of the four-day conference include the opening senior panel discussion on the evening of November 9th, an evening keynote banquet address, four roundtable sessions, and a closing-report session on November 12th. Recent keynote speakers have included Secretary Madeleine Albright, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Lieutenant General (Ret.) Brent Scowcroft, and Admiral James Stavridis.   Our organizing theme this year is "Democracy & Democratization: Challenges & Opportunities." Beginning the day after the U.S. presidential election, the conference invites participants to consider the challenges and opportunities facing the United States as it responds to key questions concerning the health and future of democracy. Among the questions to be explored are: what are the political, normative, and material limits to promoting democracy in the world? Does democracy confront greater challenges in some countries and regions? How does political radicalism in its many forms challenge democracy? What does the survival of authoritarian and hybrid regimes indicate about the long-term prospects for democracy internationally? Can democracy successfully navigate ethno-religious conflict?  

Assistant Professor of Women's Studies Specialization in LGBTQ Studies

We invite applications from persons whose scholarly production falls within the more traditional meaning of monographs and refereed journal articles and those whose scholarship is evidenced in performative and other creative venues or in a policy work. The successful candidate will be able to work across multiple disciplines and have expertise in one or more of the following areas:

• Critical Race, Queer, or Transgender Theory/Studies/Policy

• Disability Studies/Crip Theory

• Transnational Genders and Sexualities, esp. Masculinities Across Racial Lines

• Gender and Sexuality in Performance Studies and Visual Culture

Applicants must have a Ph.D. or compatible terminal degree by the time of application.

Best consideration Date: Sept. 23, 2016

For information on how to apply - wmst.umd.edu

Marjoleine Kars and Kate Brown, both professors in UMBC’s history department, have been awarded prestigious fellowships to study at the European University Institute (EUI) in Italy for fall 2016.

Kars and Brown are recipients of the Fernand Braduel Senior Fellowships, which “provide a framework for established academics with an international reputation to pursue their research at the EUI. Fellowships last for up to ten months in one of the EUI’s four Departments which in turn invite fellows to participate in departmental activities (seminars, workshops, colloquia, etc.),” according to a description on the EUI website.

During her fellowship, Kars will finish her writing her current book project Freedom Marooned: An Atlantic Slave Rebellion in the Early Modern Dutch Caribbean. She is in the midst of finishing a ten-year research project about a little known but immense eighteenth-century slave rebellion in a Dutch colony in South America (now the Republic of Guyana). Kars has previously written a book about a farmers’ rebellion in pre-revolutionary North Carolina:“Breaking Loose Together”: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), and she was a Dresher Center fellow in spring 2015. Read more about her work in the EUI’s announcement of her fellowship.

For her Fernand Braduel Fellowship, Kate Brown will work on her research project Circumnavigation: History’s Renovation in the Age of the Anthropocene. Brown is currently working on a research project about the communities circling the Chernobyl Zone. Earlier this year, Brown was named a 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and she has received significant recognition for her 2013 book Plutopia: Nuclear Families in Atomic Cities and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford 2013). Read more about Brown’s work and research in theEUI announcement.

As part of their residencies, Kars and Brown will also participate in the EUI’s Summer School in Comparative and Transnational History: Theories, Methodology and Case Studies. Kars will present Caribbean Slave Rebellions, Transnational History, and Nationalism and Brown’s talk is titled Soft Bodies: the child centered communities at ground zero of American and Soviet nuclear complexes. 

Learn more about the European University Institute and its prestigious fellowships and research programs on the EUI website.