Recent Faculty Achievements!
As we approach the final weeks of the semester, the Political Science Department would like to recognize some of the most recent faculty achievements! Congratulations to all of our faculty; we are so proud to have you!
On March 10, Dr. Sara Hassani visited Clark University to deliver a lecture as part of their Women’s and Gender Studies Seminar Series. The talk was based on a chapter of Dr. Hassani’s book manuscript, “The Embodied and Affective Language of Self-Immolation as Political Protest.”
On March 21, Dr. Myers also appeared as a guest on RI PBS’s A Lively Experiment, and was also recently quoted in The American Prospect’s lead March story, headlined “The Blue State Power Index.”
March 26, Dr. Susan McCarthy gave a presentation titled “Chinese Muslim Adaptive Innovation in the New Era” for a webinar panel on “Islam in China” organized by the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Hawaii – Manoa. The webinar can be viewed on the UH CCS YouTube page.
On March 26, Dr. Rick Battistoni was part of a faculty and high school student research team presentation at the New England Educational Research Association (NEERO) Conference in Portsmouth, NH. Dr. Battistoni’s team shared the findings of a year-long Youth Participatory Action Research project, titled “The Student Voice Revolution: Shifting Power, Shaping Learning.”
Late last month, Dr. Hassani attended an intimate conference at Yale University’s Humanities Quadrangle titled “Declarations of Dependence: Rethinking Freedom in America and the World.” She was one of 10 invited participants who were asked to read, discuss, and workshop the papers of 14 leading political theorists and historians in preparation for their publication as part of an edited volume.
This week, Dr. Ben-Artzi also delivered a talk at Sciences Po’s Center for IR, Middle East Program, on her new research project, titled “Pathbreakers, Heroes, or Complicit Collaborators: Israeli/Palestinian NGOs on the Front Lines.”
On April 18, Dr. Zencirci will deliver an invited talk at Smith College’s Program in Middle East Studies on her bookThe Muslim Social: Neoliberalism, Charity, and Poverty in Turkey.
Later this month, Dr. Tony Affigne will preside over the 78th Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, for which he has served for the past year as overall conference chair—coordinating the work of 48 organizers in 30 program divisions, three pre-conference workshops, four “mini-conferences,” and a methods café. This year’s conference in Seattle will offer more than 300 research sessions engaging more than 1,000 attendees from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and further abroad. At the conclusion of the meeting, Dr. Affigne will begin a term as WPSA president (2025-26). In this role, he will share responsibility for guiding the development of research projects, grant funding opportunities, and the peer-review publication systems of WPSA’s two scholarly journals: Political Research Quarterly and Politics, Groups, and Identities.
Dr. Ruth Ben-Artzi is teaching a weekly seminar titled “Comparative Politics of Foreign Aid” at Science Po in Paris this spring while she is away from campus on sabbatical. The seminar includes 24 students around the world, including China, Brazil, Colombia, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Germany, France, and the United States.
Dr. Hassani was also was selected as one of the first pair of Fellows for the “Bridging Scholarship and Teaching Post-Sabbatical Fellows Program” supported by the PC Center for Engaged Learning and the School of Arts and Sciences. She plans to use this funding to teach a new course in the Fall 2026 semester structured as a mentored investigation of the contemporary literature on embodied violence and bodily self-destruction in political science. This course will provide a challenging new learning opportunity for students, while also supporting Dr. Hassani’s book project.
Dr. Andrea’s McDonnell’s paper co-authored with Adam Silver, titled “‘Thanks for Being Here with Us’: Para-social Interaction and the Effects of Pundit Talk on the Hannity and Maddow Shows,” was published in the January issue of Journalism.
Dr. McDonnell was also quoted in the recent New York Times story, “Who Even Knows What Famous Means These Days? They Do.”
Dr. Dacia Pajé co-authored book chapter, titled “Television Production, #MeToo, and Gendered Challenges in Representing Rape,” was recently published in the edited volume #MeToo TV: Essays on Streaming Rape Culture.
Dr. Adam Myers signed a contract with Oxford University Press for his forthcoming book, Coordination Failure: State Taxation and National Response from the New Deal to Today. He will submit the revised manuscript this summer.
Dr. Thea Riofrancos’ forthcoming book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, is available for pre-order with W.W. Norton.
Dr. Zachariah Wheeler recently signed a contract with DeGruyter for his book, tentatively titled Emerging Majorities? Class, Culture, Ideology, and the Transformation of the American Political Parties.
Dr. Gizem Zencirci organized an international workshop titled “Inheriting Empire? Transformations and Contestations of ‘Ottoman Heritage,'” which was held during PC’s Spring Break at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Dr. Sara Hassani has published a paper on feminist politics and shared grief in Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom uprising has been accepted for publication in Theory & Event. Additionally, she was invited by an international women’s advocacy group to deliver a 1.5-minute video address to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, where she highlighted the escalating execution rates in Iran amid their UNHRC Advisory Committee nomination. Finally, most recently, she presented a paper on embodied protest and collective care at the American Political Science Association’s Foundations of Political Theory Section, contributing to a panel on the complexities of feminist hope.
Dr. Thea Riofrancos published her new book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, which 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.
Dr. Paul Herron has recently published his new article written alongside, Daniel Kryder, “Examining White Supremacy in American State Constitutions” it 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!
Dr. Tony Affinge attended the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting in Vancouver. He 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.
Dr. Michael Illuzzi 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.
Dr. Dacia Paje has recently co-edited a book titled, “Mediating Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in the GenZ Era.” This volume explores how so-called digital natives of GenZ use media in crafting generational beliefs and representational practices around sex, gender, and sexuality.
