Exciting faculty news from the Political Science Department!
We wanted to share recent faculty achievements from the Political Science Department.
Dr. Sara Hassani has recently been approved to publish her new paper: “Affective Resistance Against Sovereign Erasure: Historicizing the (Maternal) and Feminist Politics of Shared Grief in Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising”. It is scheduled to be published in the upcoming edition of Theory & Event. Congratulations, Dr. Hassan,i on this exciting achievement! Dr. Hassani has also been busy working on and speaking at the 23rd Meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, where she highlighted the escalating execution rates in Iran amid their UNHRC Advisory Committee nomination. Her work in this area is amazing! Congratulations again Dr. Hassani!
LINK: https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1x/k1xvp29xii?kalturaStartTime=8944&config[playback]=%7B
Additionally, Professor Tony Affigne attended the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting in Vancouver. Professor Tony Affigne chaired a research paper panel on “New Directions in Voting and Representation,” and served as discussant for seven graduate student poster presentations. Also in Vancouver, as president of the Western Political Science Association, Dr. Affigne presided over the semi-annual meeting of the WPSA Executive Council, making plans for WPSA’s spring 2026 conference in San Diego, California.
Furthermore, congratulations to Dr. Thea Riofrancos on the publication of her new book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, released in late September! The book launched at Riff Raff and was followed by campus events at Colby College and Clark University. It has already received strong praise in The Atlantic and Nature. Dr. Riofrancos also co-authored a policy report titled Global Green Industrial Policy: Navigating Power Dynamics for a Pro-Working Class, Pro-Development Green Transformation.
LINKS: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324036760/overview https://climateandcommunity.org/research/global-green-industrial-policy/ https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/10/extraction-mineral-mining-thea-riofrancos-book-review/684214/ https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03224-z
We also have a publication announcement from Dr. Herron! His new article written alongside, Daniel Kryder, “Examining White Supremacy in American State Constitutions” has been published at Publius! He’s been working on this article for a long while, so we are so excited for it to be published! Amazing work Dr. Herron!
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Congratulations to Dr. Michael Illuzzi who co-authored with Nafisa Tanjeem on their new publication in Radical Teacher. Their article, “Can there be a feminist pedagogy within the e-Learning industrial complex?”, examines how the growing ties between university leadership, corporate interests, and technology reshape higher education, and what this means for feminist pedagogy today.
Congrats, Dr. Matt Guardino, on co-authoring the article “Demanding Invisibility: Examining U.S. Attitudes Toward Immigrant Political Engagement” was recently published in the journal Political Research Quarterly. This article is based on research from the Russell Sage Foundation/Carnegie Corporation of NY grant that his former PSC faculty colleague Jeff Pugh (now at UMass Boston) received a few years ago. Two PC undergraduate student assistants (named in the Acknowledgements) also helped with the project.
LINK: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10659129251384592
Dr. Casey Stevens and six undergraduate Political Science students — Whitney Bond, Olivia Keane, Maria Mantini, Elizabeth Muller, Katharine O’Neil, and Madeleine Outlaw — presented original research on this very question at the Northeast International Studies Association conference. On a panel alongside distinguished professors and Ph.D. candidates from top programs, these students shared important findings on international environmental politics and species protection.
