Come study at Virginia Tech’s School of Public & International Affairs! We have a small number of graduate assistantships for talented students from the US and overseas that are awarded on a competitive basis. Ph D research in Government and International Affairs is academically driven and requires substantive empirical research. Research methods are required to be ethically responsible and involve no conflict of interest. Empirical research should be transparent and based on open sources.
Below is a list of the Ph D students I have supervised to completion in the past decade. This does not include students upon whose Ph D committee I have served as a regular committee member.
Ph D Graduates
Walter Landgraf III, “Robust and Rhetorical Action: Explaining NATO’s Long Commitment to the Bucharest Decision.” Graduated 2023.
Jasper Schneider, “A Crisis of Influence: The US and Soviet Sphere of Influence Interventionism During the Cold War.” Graduated 2023.
Jim Davitch, “A Shield in the Sky: The Vertical Geopolitics of Transcontinental Air Defense.” Graduated May 2023.
Nareg Seferian, “Territorial Shock and Fragmented Geopolitical Culture: The New Geography of Armenia and Siunik.” Graduated May 2023.
Gela Merabishvili, “The Politics of Border Walls.” Graduated December 2020.
Adna Karamehic-Oates, “Reconceptions of ‘Home’ and Identity within the Post-War Bosnian Diaspora in the United States.” Graduated May 2018.
Sonya Finley, “Recommending Political Warfare—The Role of Eisenhower’s Presidential Committee on International Information Activities in the United States’ Approach to the Cold War.” Graduated December 2016.
William Bryan Riddle, “Essence of Desperation: Accounting for Counterinsurgency Doctrines as Solutions to War Fighting Failures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan” Graduated December 2016.
A substantially revised version of this dissertation was published as The Essence of Desperation: Counterinsurgency Doctrine as the Solution to War Fighting Failures, by Lexington Books in 2017.
Adis Maksić, “Mobilizing for Ethnic Violence? Ethnonationalist Political Parties and the Dynamics of Ethno-Politicization.” Graduated December 2014.
A substantially revised version of this dissertation is now available as a book, Ethnic Mobilization, Violence, and the Politics of Affect: The Serb Democratic Party and the Bosnian War from Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Hear Adis discuss this book here.
David D. Belt, “Framing Islam as a Threat: The Use of Islam by some US conservatives as a platform for cultural politics in the decade after 9/11.” Graduated December 2014.
Current Ph D Candidate Students
Carol Beck, “Securitizing Air Spaces: How the Pan Am 103 Bombing Led to a New Extraterritorial Aviation Regime.” Graduation expected Fall 2024.
Emina Muzaferija, “The Geopolitics of Demining: Comparing the Demining Process in Post-War Bosnia and Wartime Ukraine.”
George Atalla, “Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste: The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo and its Impact on U.S. Energy Politics.”
Other Ph D students are currently completing their course work. If you would like to join our community of critical thinkers on geopolitics please email me and apply through the Virginia Tech Graduate School.
Critical Geopolitics 