New and Noteworthy

Dr. Joan Ricart-Huguet

Dr. Joan Ricart-Huguet just joined the Department at Loyola as an Assistant Professor. Joan was born and raised in Catalonia. He recently completed his PhD at Princeton and this past year was a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer at Yale. He became interested in the social sciences early in high school, where he was a student activist. His interest in political science was sparked by a masterfully taught introductory class in his first semester at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. In that class, he read seminal contributions to the discipline by scholars such as Almond, Dahl, Easton, Olson, Ostrom, Riker, Rokkan, and others. While in graduate school, Joan specialized in comparative politics and political economy. He studies how political elites form, the political legacies of colonialism, decentralization, and the role of culture on the formation of sociopolitical preferences and behavior. This fall, Joan will be teaching Comparative Politics.

Dr. Carsten Vala

Dr. Carsten Vala's new book was published in August, 2017. The Politics of Protestant Churches and the Party-State in China: God Above Party? Among China's restive religious and social groups, Protestants have created the most sustained organizational challenges to the Chinese Communist Party's ordering of society. Tracing the rise of large, illegal Protestant congregations, this book highlights the importance of the "public transcript," the public behavior of religious actors and regime officials, as critical to understanding the dynamics of negotiation, domination, and resistance in the 2000s. It paradoxically demonstrates that societal actors can alter the boundaries set by the Communist Party and the Party is more adaptive and resilient in its relations with society than imagined.

Dr. Kevin Hula

Congratulations to Dr. Kevin Hula, the 2016 recipient of the Harry W. Rodgers, III, Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award.

Kellianne Hickey and Lauren Meyer

Congratulations to Political Science majors Kellianne Hickey and Lauren Meyer! Kellianne and Lauren received second and third place awards, respectively, in the Social Sciences Oral Presentations at the 2015 Undergraduate Student Research and Scholarship Colloquium.

Kellianne Hickey presented her research, "Hungry for Justice: The New Roles of Religious Non-profits in Preventing, Serving and Advocating for American Hunger Relief since the 2008 Recession."

Lauren Meyer presented her research, "Assessing Mass Rape as a Crime Against Humanity at the ICTY."