Professor Government and International Affairs
Virginia Tech, VTRC Office 6-020,900 North Glebe Road,Arlington, VA 22203, USAPopular Categories
Abkhazia August War Bosnia Bosnian war Caucasus conflict Critical Geopolitics Current affairs De Facto States Democracy ethnic cleansing Five Day War forced displacement genocide Geography Geopolitics Georgia Nagorno-Karabakh Nagorny Karabakh nationalism Obama Political Borders Political Geography Putin Radovan Karadzic South Ossetia Syria Uncategorized war crimes Washington D.C. World political mapBlogroll
- Duck of Minerva US IR scholars on contemporary international affairs
- Geographical Imaginations 2020 Historic posts on war & space by Derek Gregory
- Political Geography Specialty Group Political Geography Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers
- Political Violence at a Glance
- Progressive Geographies Thinking about place and power
Professional Affiliation
- Government and International Affairs The Government and International Affairs program at Virginia Tech
- The School of Public and International Affairs School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech
Research Projects
- The De Facto States Project The De Facto States Project
Critical Geopoltiics
- Public Opinion in Frontline Ukrainian Cities in 2022
- Six months of bloody war in Ukraine
- New Research: Ukrainian attitudes toward territorial compromises.
- Articles in The Irish Times on the Ukraine Crisis and War
- Research on public opinion in the Donbas on the eve of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Category Archives: Bosnian war
Fears and Fantasies about the “Flesh of the Nation”
Yesterday Adis Maksic defended his Ph D dissertation “Mobilizing for Ethnic Violence? Ethno-National Political Parties and the Dynamics of Ethno-Politicization.” Adis is a Sarajevo native who was fortunately able to come to the United States with his family after his family suffered a … Continue reading
Bosnia by the Black Sea? Could Crimea be another BiH?
I have an op ed on this topic on the Open Democracy Russia website under the title “Could Crimea Be Another Bosnia?” http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/gerard-toal/could-crimea-be-another-bosnia-republika-srpska-krajina For Bosnia specialists, below is the source I used for the opening quote. Specialists will know I … Continue reading
The Birth of a Nation: Radovan Karadžić and the Ethnopoliticization of Bosnia in 1990
By the time he strode to the podium in Skenderija Hall, Sarajevo, on 12 July 1990 to speak, the journey of Dr Radovan Karadžić from obscure psychiatrist to politician, wartime leader, and later accused war criminal had begun. Karadžić had been working for months … Continue reading
Joe Sacco and the Great War
I had the pleasure of meeting Joe Sacco last night at Politics and Prose where he presented his latest work, The Great War. July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme. An Illustrated Panorama. First conceived over 15 years … Continue reading
Bridging Division: (London) Derry & Mostar
Derry and Mostar are divided by histories of sectarian strife and ethnoterritorialism, and physically united by bridges as symbols of aspirational unity (like the peace bridge above, photo credit Peter MacDiarmid). At the end of this month I am participating in … Continue reading
Posted in Bosnia, Bosnian war, Current affairs, Northern Ireland
Tagged Bosnia, bridge, city of culture, division, Northern Ireland, partition
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The Improvised State
Alex Jeffrey is a lecturer in Geography at Cambridge University in the (maybe not so) United Kingdom (what say you Scotland?). He is the author of a theoretically innovative new book called The Improvised State: Sovereignty, Performance and Agency in … Continue reading
Reversing Ethnic Cleansing: Is It Possible Peacefully?
On 10 March I gave the closing keynote at the 6th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (CARFMS). The topic of my talk was Reversing Ethnic Cleansing: Bosnia’s Experience and Protracted Displacement in the … Continue reading
The Rhetorical Politics of Milorad Dodik
My essay on the former prime minister and current president of Republika Srpska has just been published in the Discussion section of the journal Nationalities Papers, a Taylor and Francis journal (41, 1: 160-204). I’m grateful to the departing editor … Continue reading
Posted in Bosnia, Bosnian war, Current affairs, Democracy, nationalism, Rhetoric, World political map
Tagged Milorad Dodik, referendum
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The Bosnian War Twenty Years Ago
This week marks the twentieth anniversary of the Bosnian War. Its a time for remembrance, of the circumstances that created it, the people who planned it, the perpetrators and the victims. Most of the focus will be on Sarajevo later … Continue reading
Researching the Founding Fathers: Karadzic and Mladic
Last Friday I attended a conference entitled fY + 20 (the former Yugoslavia plus 20 years) organized by my co-author Dr Carl Dahlman at the Miami University in Oxford Ohio (with the help of others and sponsoring institutions). It was … Continue reading