Campus & Community

Belfer Center announces research fellows 2008-09

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The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School announces the following new 2008-09 research fellows. These fellows conduct research within the Belfer Center’s International Security Program (ISP).

Lt. Col. William D. Anderson Jr. is a National Defense Fellow with the Belfer Center. His former assignment was as commander of the 15th Airlift Squadron at Charleston Air Force Base, S.C. A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, he is a senior pilot with more than 4,600 hours including combat time in support of operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Balkans.

Jennifer Bulkeley is a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard, a research fellow with the International Security Program, and a research assistant with the Belfer Center’s Preventive Defense Project. Her research interests include Chinese foreign policy and security strategy, and the global nonproliferation regime.

Thomas Hegghammer is an Oxford and Paris–educated Middle East specialist, who has published and consulted widely on jihadism and al-Qaeda. A senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (FFI) in Oslo, he is preparing a book about the jihadi ideologue Abdallah Azzam and the first Arab Afghans. Hegghammer is appointed through the Belfer Center’s Initiative on Religion in International Affairs.

Azeem Ibrahim is currently completing his Ph.D. at the Centre of International Studies at the University of Cambridge. His thesis examines the different phases of U.S. policy in the Caspian region since the collapse of the Soviet Union and seeks to identify the motivational drivers that were significant in each phase to explain policy outcomes.

Eric Kaufmann directs the master’s program in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict at Birkbeck, University of London. A recipient of the Political Studies Association’s 2008 Richard Rose Prize, he is writing a book on the demography of religion. Kaufmann is appointed through the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs.

Nelly Lahoud is assistant professor of political theory, including Islamic political thought, at Goucher College. She completed her Ph.D. in 2002 at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. She is currently completing a manuscript about past and present jihadis. Lahoud is conducting research under the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs.

Megan MacKenzie received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Alberta and has published in areas related to wartime sexual violence and female soldiers, including a chapter in R. Charli Carpenter’s “Born of War.” Her research experience includes extensive work in Sierra Leone, where she interviewed more than 50 former female soldiers.

Ragnhild Nordås is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, completing a dissertation on religion and civil conflict. Her research interests include the effects of religion on political violence, nonstate actors in civil war, state repression, group inequality, environmental/climatic factors, and armed conflict. Nordås is conducting research under the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs.

Andrea Strimling is a scholar and practitioner whose work focuses on inter-agency, civil-military, public-private coordination in postconflict peace building, and stabilization and reconstruction operations. She holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at The Fletcher School Tufts University.

Dominic Tierney is assistant professor of political science at Swarthmore College with a Ph.D. from Oxford University. He will research the impact of U.S. military defeat, multilateralism, and American perceptions of war.

Karine Walther holds a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University, a maîtrise and licence in sociology from the University of Paris VIII, and a B.A. in American studies from the University of Texas, Austin. Her research focuses on how American cultural beliefs about Islam influenced U.S. foreign policy in the 19th and 20th centuries. Walther is conducting research under the Belfer Center’s Initiative on Religion in International Affairs and Dubai Initiative.

Melissa Willard-Foster is a UCLA political science Ph.D. candidate specializing in international relations, security studies, and quantitative methods. Her dissertation deals with the causes and consequences of foreign-imposed regime change. She holds an M.A. in international relations from the University of Chicago and a B.S. from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

Keren Yarhi-Milo is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation tests the extent to which changes in an adversary’s military capabilities, doctrine, and behavioral signals shape and transform perceptions of intentions for both senior civilian decision makers and intelligence analysts.